The cycle of life.....

Pondering's on a funeral...... so my Great Mother-in-Law recently passed over at the grand old age of 101. This amazing age of hers and lifetime has always inspired within me a feeling of calm and a deep sense of knowing. I have always felt - maybe with a inner determination that I will live long, I have always seen myself as an old lady in my minds eye, which has always been a comfort and entertainment to me. Maybe it is why I have always been drawn to older people, I feel that they are the ones worth listening to, as they have experienced more time on this Earth than me, met more people, seen more scenarios than me, or at least in theory. Yet we know that each life is unique and that depending on how we spend our time and how we translate, understand or interpret what we see, has an impact on how we behave and how our lives play out.

I was very close to Nanna and knew her for the last 14 years of her life. I sometimes spent time alone with her, she lived very much going through the motions of her daily rituals which having a cup of tea was the commonest. She was very self contained and a conversation beyond the weather was very rare. Yet I always felt an intense love from her and for her. She had an appreciation for nature and beauty which I believe is one of the cornerstones of our human existence. She taught me through my observations of her that contentment and simplicity are a state of sometimes unconscious bliss but bliss in the most calm grounded way. This I assume comes from being born in a time when life was much simpler somehow and very different to how it is now, she never engaged well with technology and wasn't interested in taking any responsibility for learning it or using it.

Arranging the Farewell and celebration of her life gave me insight into a time that will never be again.....We collected all the photos which she loved yet treated roughly from many of her drawers around her home and put them into a basic chronological order and arranged them on the walls. Seeing her from being a little girl to looking sprightly in her 80's was a privilege and highly interesting to observe.

She had a meditative quality to her and a sereneness where she didn't need to be doing things or achieving stuff, or at least that is how I perceived her. She liked to potter with the plants and bake mostly before I met her. Yet she had a strength of character like nobody else and was definitely the matriarch of our little family.

Meeting everyone else who knew her, as at all funerals I have been to, can throw a different essence into the appreciation about the person who has passed, as we all have our different perceptions of who the departed are and what they were to us. I really feel that this is part of the intrigue, speaking to others about their experience of the person we are saying farewell to, as we are all so different and respond to each other so uniquely.

It seems to me that as the phrase goes “nature abhors a vacuum” Aristotle coined this and I believe it to be true. When a space is made something will fill it, and while I was at her flat with everyone around me I felt the space opening up and conversations and synchronicity's all tumbling our lives together and apart, I felt something shift as Nanna no longer resides in our lives physically. She is now contained in our hearts and minds, but the time and commitment that we all had to her and the physical space that is now empty will be filled.....

So many questions can be asked and pondered upon about how the world intrinsically changes and how many lives are affected when one human exits. It is important I feel, to consider this, as it helps us to understand our own importance. It is important for us to understand how much each of us and our individual soul contributes to the amazing web of life. We are all incredibly important in this journey that we share together, I believe just by being true to ourselves and accepting our individual loving nature we make this world a better place, bringing happiness to each other just by being authentically true to who we are.

I hope that you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it, there is nothing I love more than a bit of philosophical pondering and I have found the perfect place for this right here, so praise be to Nanna.