At 89 she had lived a full and busy life, quite "compos mentis" up until about five years ago. For the last almost two years she had been resident in a nursing home where sadly Altzeimers slowly eroded her mind and personality. It's a truly awful disease, isn't it?!
Her funeral was (to use a cliche) a celebration of her life. The last five years were not her sum total and we preferred to focus on her life before that. The photo slide show reminded us all that old ladies were once frivolous young things in stylish frocks and who rode pillion on motorbikes.
I hope she didn't have many regrets. I hope the few memories the disease would allow her to keep were of picnics and dances and the taste of ice cream her mother use to make. I hope she is enjoying renewing contact with family and friends that made the journey before her.
And I hope as we continue with our lives we consciously enjoy every moment we can.
"This ain't no dress rehearsal."
" A Parable of Immortality."
"I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other. Then someone at my side says, “There, she's gone.”
“Gone where?” Gone from my sight. That is
all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my
side, and she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her
destined port. Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment
when someone at my side says, “There, she's gone!” there are other eyes
watching her coming, and there are other voices ready to take up the glad
shout, “Here she comes!”
- Henry van Dyke (1852 –
1933)
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