Death comes to steal someone away from you when you least expect it. Quickly. With no time to absorb what is actually happening. In the blur that follows, you try to support someone, people try to support you, they shake your hand, offer you condolences, people you don’t know. Faces you may never again see. But from the crowd and from the stories you hear, you know, yes, this is a person who will be missed. Does it help? It helps to know that people admired, respected and loved this woman. But it doesn’t really help you in your grief. Because grief hasn’t actually arrived, only shock.
You meet her friends, one from her primary school days, long, enduring friendships, fifty, sixty, seventy years old. They too in shock and disbelief. “But she was so strong”. “I only saw her the day before yesterday!”. A woman, almost the last of a particular generation who lived on a particular street in a particular town in Ireland. Fifty four years on the street, over sixty in the town. A fiercely independent person, who did so much for so many. Quiet reflections offering you insights to dimensions of this person, of which you were not aware. A person with many friends, many acquaintances and of course family. A person, who, being the eldest of all the siblings was always there for everyone. But no more. How is the one that was always there gone? How is that possible?
A sister, a wife, a mother, a grandmother, a great-grand mother, a matriarch. A dominant force in every moment of my life, my whole life a blur of memories with her. Every little old lady made me think, how strong she is in comparison. How long she will live. She was, but death comes to steal. It doesn’t ask permission, doesn’t ask “would you like some more time, is there something else you want to say?”
You try to accept that she is gone and won’t be back. You know it’s real, but somehow, it doesn’t seem so. “Maybe if I ring she will answer, one last time”. Except she won’t. Her spirit is gone, departed from her body. Her house lies empty. Now just a house. We all hang by a thread. They fray to nothing when you least expect it.
There are no second chances sometimes. No final farewells. Don’t ever say, “I’ll tell them next time I see them”. Treat each farewell as the last. Death comes to steal. In the low hours of the night.
