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)
