FIVE YEARS AGO

Five years have gone by since the passing of my dear mother, Mary Shuker. Sometimes it seems like only moments ago, other times an eternity, a different life in a different world. How I miss you Mom, how I love you and wish with all my heart that you were still here with me, sharing my life, making it worth living again, a real life instead of a sham existence.

FIVE YEARS AGO

Five years ago today, Mom, you left my life, you left this world – and my life, my world, was left lifeless, worldless, without you. So it remains today, and so it will always remain, until we are together once more, all of us, our family, reunited at last and forever. Friends tell me that you have never left me, that you are still here, all about me, always. I am reminded by their words of other words - those attributed to Hakim Sanai, a 12th-Century Persian poet:

Unable to perceive the shape of you,

I find you all around me.

Your presence fills my eyes with your love,

It humbles my heart,

For you are everywhere.

How I wish, how I hope, how I pray that this is so, and, above all else, that even if only once ever, but at least just once, I could know this for certain, beyond any doubt, beyond any shadow or whisper or flicker of hesitation, know that you were indeed here still, filling my soul with your love that was always there for me when you lived beside me in my life, when you walked with me in my world.

Then again, perhaps it is a test, a test of faith - just like Orpheus faced when walking out of the Underworld in the fervent hope that his deceased bride Eurydice was indeed following behind him, but Orpheus failed to win her back when he finally gave in to the temptation of doubt and looked behind him to make sure that she really was there, and, in so doing, lost her a second time, and this time for all time. Perhaps my test is to draw upon and have faith in my memories of your love for me, upon my certain knowledge that as long as you are in any way able to stay close by, you will indeed do so, never leaving or abandoning me, but instead always here for me, watching over me, guiding me as ever, until my own time here is complete - and that as long as I believe this to be so, so shall it be. Only if my mortal doubts overcome me will I lose you here again, a second time, Mom.

So, on this day, of all days, I must overcome any doubts, any fears, and for all time, because I will not lose you again - never! - and henceforth I will continue, in whatever role God intends for me here on His Earth, until in His mercy I am finally at peace and at last restored to you, to all of us, in His Heaven, never more to be parted.

God bless you, Mom, may I always be worthy of you, as the son you loved so much when you lived beside me in this world, and as the son whose love for you lives on in this world, and always will do, through all the days of my own life here, however many or few those may be.

My mother Mary Shuker (© Dr Karl Shuker)

MY LADY OF DARK DESPAIR

For some, depression is a Black Dog that pads resolutely alongside them, a hound of shadow and sorrow relentlessly stalking their steps, unable to be shaken off or shooed away. For me, it is a Lady, a Lady of Dark Despair, whose great wings enfold me unexpectedly in their terrible shadows of doom and doubt.

MY LADY OF DARK DESPAIR

My Lady of Dark Despair, why have you encompassed me once more

With your black-plumed wings of grim shadow and spirit-numbing gloom,

Their enveloping, all-embracing pinions of cool ebony extinguishing all light from my life,

All wisdom from my world, all memory from my mind, all salvation from my soul?

I feel your icy tears like disconsolate, dispassionate dewfall,

Trickling ever deeper into the warm, sunlit sanctuary of my heart,

To freeze it in crystalline cemetery night-chill,

Until its very beating seem stilled and silent.

Am I as pale, as pellucid now, as your own pallid complexion and reflection,

As isolated, as insular, as the sorrowful realm in which you reign supreme,

Alone, apart, aloof from the mortals whom you torment with your denying of hopes,

Your destruction of dreams, your despoiling of memories?

Or will I find the strength within my being to dismiss your dread visage,

To discount your intrusive murmurs of doubt, to disdain your grey forebodings of doom,

And turn away from your darkness, from the sadness that your presence imbues,

And step back into the laughter and the light of the world once more,

Where the sun still shines, the moon still shimmers, the stars still sparkle,

And my soul awakens anew, renewed and restored,

Raised up once more upon the bright wings of recalled, recollected, resurrected Hope,

To greet a new day's golden dawning, with all of its wonders awaiting me there?