Hit Bottom? The Only Way is Up...

It's one of those weeks. A week when I received a telephone call from my brother announcing the passing away of our mother. At 91 years of age, nearing 92, she died in her sleep whilst living in a home specifically for accommodating patients with severe dementia. The home was about ten miles away from where we live, so without a car, it wasn't quite "just around the corner."

She must have been in an awful state. No longer able to speak or understand English, she had reverted to her childhood Italian. Just as well my brother warned me not to go and visit. She would have not recognised me as her son but as a total stranger, and my brother feared that I would end up feeling very upset.

Indeed I would have been. She has memories of her late husband, our father, and she had never come to terms with his passing.

Suddenly the world had changed. I'm now the eldest one in what's left of our family.

As family relationships go, Mum and Dad always looked out for our affairs, even though quite often we clashed.  Show me a family by name where disagreements never occur, yes, then I'll be convinced that we were below average as a unit. As it was, we were as good as any other.

For example, when not at school, Dad gave me a set of multiplication to do as homework. Often I resented this, especially when other children can be seen playing in the street. Indeed, in the 1960s, children played in the street - football, cricket, made-up adventure games. You name it, they were happy in their participation.

Mum always made sure we were properly fed and clothed. During the week, both of them went out to work while we went to school. Between them, their budget wasn't at all great. Rather, they had to skimp and save. But they always made sure we had our needs met and we had the resources to enjoy life as best we can.

Then there was Christmas. Oh my, Christmas.

When my brother was just a toddler and I was a pre-teenage boy, how excited I became when I rushed into the lounge from our shared bedroom. One Christmas morning, probably in 1960, there was Dad's older brother standing at the head of our dining table with a train set laid out. In those days, train sets were powered by two batteries, and knowing Uncle, he was very strict with economising. As I got the train moving, after two or three circuits, this RAF Warrant Officer asked me a question:

If you had a box of sweets and you ate one after another, how many would you have left?

"Er, none left" I answered.

Well then. The same will happen with the batteries. Enough with the train!

Luckily, I had more presents to unwrap. One revealed a Lego set, and I spent much of the morning playing with that, having forgotten about the train set.

But in all, Christmas was always a family get-together. With the Christmas tree up, a real tree that is, with its lovely aroma, fallen needles making a ring on the floor surrounding the pot, and decorated with thin coloured glass baubles which smashed into pieces if accidentally dropped, the four adults, Aunt and Uncle, Mum and Dad, always merry among themselves, had always given us a time to cherish and remember.

Ah, those cigars Dad always smoked. The aroma, so Christmassy. The turkey and all the niceties which followed. Christmas pudding ablaze with burning brandy. The tangy taste of tangerines. Walnuts and hazelnuts to crack when it's my turn for use of the shared nutcracker. Crackers with paper hats, small trashy novelties and naff jokes, all down to adult responsibilities. All we children need to do is allow ourselves to be carried along in the flow, and enjoy the atmosphere.

Our Wedding Day, October 1999. My parents are on the right.

Now they are gone, all four adults who each played a role in looking after my little brother and me. With Mum's passing only two days ago, suddenly everything is different.

It's by the grace of God that I have a loving, understanding wife, whose shoulder she provided for me to bury with grief. If I had remained a singleton, I think it would be far worse. One of the most destructive emotions is an unhealthfully strong sense of loneliness. Even as a married man, I can't escape such emotion, that longing for my mother's reassuring arms once again and even Dad's A4 sheet of multiplications to solve. It's that possibility that I would never see them again and such memories will linger.

There is that silence, that awful silence, which not even music is can disperse. It's as if the whole world is now resting on my shoulders. Not that I loaded anything on my parents, heaven forbid, I was very independent and saw the Bank of Mum and Dad as something of an insult. But the difference is, that when she was still alive, she was there. Now an empty hole looms, a vacuum in the midst of a Coronavirus lockdown which I have hopes of seeing it end soon with the rollout of the vaccines.

Then I can go back to church and enjoy real worship and fellowship. Once again I can hug, greet and talk face-to-face. While a physical family is diminishing by natural causes, nothing is better than enjoying the warmth of a spiritual family, friends who are loyal to Christ and therefore each one of us is a brother and a sister making up the Bride of Christ.

Meanwhile, the best I can do is to stay close to God and to thank Him for the family I grew up in. And learn to thankfully appreciate each day of my life God has given. This includes essentials such as food, clothing and shelter. But with the niceties around us, many of them ornamental presents I bought for Alex over the years, indeed, this brings a homely cheer which helps in binding our marriage even stronger than we had possibly imagined.

The loss of my parents is sad, tragic, even. But we have God as our heavenly Father and through faith in Jesus Christ, we can boldly come to His throne. How wonderful it is, when God the Father sees us in the same way He sees his Son, with the imputed righteousness of Christ already in our accounts, we have much to look forward to.

However, I'm still writing this with sadness in my heart, sadness over the loss of our mother. I guess it will take a while before I'll get over it. Meanwhile, God is patient and understanding.

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This blog was written quickly. This is a result of my normal weekly contribution accidentally deleted when I have almost finished typing in the text. What happened, I don't really know. I just touched a key I shouldn't have touched. The whole text turned white on a blue background. I tried to return the page to normal and poof! The entire text deleted. Six hours of work gone, just like that. I had thoughts of abandoning this week's blog but decided at the last minute to re-write it.

 

What I don't understand is why, in this day and age, such technology doesn't have a safeguard against such accidents. A panel warning me of this and providing an opt-out prompt would have been very beneficial.

Therefore, if the flow of the text looks a little rough, it's because I squeezed six hour's writing into less than two hours.

God bless.