Creena looking out of the window of a Vaporetto crossing over to San Giorgio Maggiore

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mum’s anniversary was on 1st January. She died a little after mid-day. Hers had been a long and painful struggle from life to death. She kept her religious faith admirably and in the last weeks when she found it difficult to speak I sat by her on each visit and said Morning and Evening prayers from her well thumbed copy of the Simple Prayer book. She loved the Angelus and at her Requiem we all said that prayer together one last time.

I remember those last times with warmth tinged with sadness.

My sister Catherine was sitting with mum when she died. Mum was holding her little wooden rosary. Catherine called the Parish Priest in St Joseph’s Church, Maidenhead. Father Tom came straight away and gave her the last sacrament….

I came later and together we chose mum’s outfit and I said the Angelus and kissed her and put her favourite perfume on her as I ‘d always done on each visit. Afterwards we found two little angel lights my brother Peter had given her just a few days earlier for Christmas. We put them on either side of her bed. Then the nursing staff from St Marks Nursing Home came in one by one to kiss Creena goodbye.

This last time together possessed a poignancy mere words cannot quite capture.

I will get a requiem said for her both in England and in Ireland in her home town of Cashel…where she was born and where her last living siblings, her brother Gus and sister Nancy live in Boherclough Street.

I wrote a poem which I gave her for Mother’s Day whilst she was in the nursing home – I’ll put into the Writing Section – but actually mum loved another poem I wrote…always my kindest critic…she kept it and often got me to read it to her…I used to get a bit embarrassed. She said it made her cry. So I’ll put it here as we say another goodbye through the soft tears of love…..

My Love: why have you travelled on so far ahead of me?
You’ve crossed the narrow straits of time to vast eternity
Now I am left here all alone and you are there, elsewhere.
But what or where is the ‘there’ and shall I too go ‘there’?

It’s all left so uncertain since you’ve gone away from me

You’re more distant than a shore is from boundless endless sea

Far beyond the furthest planet’s distant orbit of the sun

No longer conjugatable; beyond the verb ‘to be’.
I’ve lost my place I’m lost in space solitary since you’ve gone.
I’ve photographic records but these only dimly can infer
More of, the ‘esprit de corps’ of, the person that you were.
Golden silence has wrapped you in its gilded dead embrace
And silver speech cannot disturb your sweetly sleeping face.
And speechless in my stricken grief I want your liberty.
I want you to reclaim, redeem, this soul that’s pledged to you;
Revive me as the earth’s revived by early morning dew.
Due tears have flowed as waterfalls; I’ve cried until I’m dry;
Yet I still think I hear you sing our lonesome lullaby.
We composed Love’s song together – a new note every day,
But it has become a swan song for duets we used to play.
A lone voice evokes echoes of love’s closest harmony
Diminished sounds that fade away to your eternity.
Your music changed my world but this lovebird sings alone,
Exists with empty echoes in this house that was our home.
And here I’ll wait without you, Love, until the day I die;
Once more united we shall sing our lonesome lullaby.