It was the brightest spring day today. Grandma and I walked down to the village shop to get some prunes, washing powder, and then to the butcher's to get porridge oats. On the way back, we took a detour through the field behind the primary school, and stopped multiple times to bird watch, and listen to the different sounds a robin, great tit, chaffinch and dove make. It is a personal desire of mine to learn the names of as many trees and birds and flowers as I can while I'm here.
Before lunch, Auntie Sarah, Grandma and I sat in the garden with our chairs turned towards the sun. I was reading Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. Auntie Sarah was sorting through the christmas cards to Auntie Sheila from the people who hadn't realised she'd died. Grandma was on the phone to one of Auntie Sheila's old friends, talking about their childhood of collecting blackberries during their Sunday School Class and walking to the phone box at the end of the lane with a handful of coins in order to make a phone call. I was sucked into the heady, spice-scented world of Yemen, and the little flies that kept landing on my yellow jacket (perhaps they thought it was a sunflower) added to the illusion that I'd been lifted from East Anglia to the Middle East.
“I am in another world, a world where faith and prayer are instinctive and universal, where not to pray, not to be able to pray, is an affliction worse than blindness, where disconnection from God is worse than losing a limb.”
― Paul Torday, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
Auntie Sarah took the line from Grandma after a while, and talked to Pat about Auntie Sheila's death. Apparently it was an infection that took her whole body, and they couldn't operate to safe her because her heart was too weak anyway. She told the doctor, 'I'm in your hands, but I'm also in God's hands.'
I never really knew what exactly caused her death until Auntie Sarah told Pat. I suppose it didn't matter to me. In my head Auntie Sheila's death hadn't been a result of malignant virus or bacteria, it had been the final ascension of a woman who was already so close to heaven. Jesus said to her, definitively, 'Come to me' and she did. How she did didn't seem to matter that much.
Later that day I finished Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, and discovered the magic that is alpro soya chocolate pudding on toast.
No comments:
Post a Comment