...irrevocably in you when you watch someone you love die. I've resisted somewhat writing about it, because I genuinely am unsure how to word it, how to encapsulate what a beautiful, yet heartbreaking, soul-affirming and yet soul-destroying moment it is.
I know I'll be thinking, feeling, reliving and remembering my Aunt's passing for a considerable length of time yet, and yet, this piece has been started, both mentally, and physically, so many times and stopped, on both the computer and on paper....so we'll see how far it gets today.
I honestly feel like I had no time to contemplate just how hard the loss of Anne would hit me. Out of all my Aunts, she was the one I was closest to, she was the one I would text now and again about something small, something silly. She knew about boyfriends, she knew about work, she knew about what i got up to in my free time, she knew about everything. That's not to say we were texting or talking 24/7, but over the last year, I had been down so much to Limerick for work and stayed with her & my Uncle so many times that I was really looking forward to doing it more often as the years passed. But alas....
It's the stupid things in grief that hit. Those "this time X weeks" ago moments that ambush you. Earlier today, the realisation that this date 8 weeks ago, I had been helping to carry her out to the hearse, despite the protestations of my Uncles and my gammy knee, I felt I had to lend to a hand, even if it was one guided by a limp, to even help to carry her was such an overwhelming emotion that I find it hard to describe. Even though Anne's soul, her spirit was technically gone, it was still her, it was still something I felt I could help her with.
As I said, something changes in you when you watch someone you love so deeply take their last breath. Everything in the world seems more raw, more fresh, more real. You can't understand why people scream at one another in traffic, why people insist on "things" being so important, newspapers and magazines and twitter and facebook tell you that you MUST download this app as it'll change/fix/improve your life, that you must visit this place or check out that band and it all seems so pointless, because at the end of the day, you'd trade everything, every possession, just to have those last few days back, because it would mean life would feel somewhat ok again.
The way the services went, the reposing in Limerick where her friends and colleagues were able to say their goodbyes, the funeral in Sligo, the cremation in Dublin went...they were perfect. Everyone took their own things from them. For me, the Cathedral will always be a place of mourning-i have buried too many friends and family from there to think of it in any other way. Yet I know merely being able to have Anne's funeral there, and especially having her neighbours as the celebrants brought a wonderful comfort to us all, and particularly,a special comfort to those in our family (and friends) of the Catholic faith.
Beautiful and all as the funeral was, the cremation was where I felt Anne's spirit, her essence, her soul and love shone through. From the moment Sean got up to speak, there was love, there was humour, there was heartbreak, there was kindness and compassion in every speaker, which echoed through the walls there. The music was perfect, and my only regret is that we didn't manage to squeeze in some T-Rex too!
There was even some smiles for me after the curtains closed as I realised that the next track on the CD was Pink Floyd's "Time", which, if you're not familiar with, starts off with bells ringing and blaring. As most of the crowd in the crematorium weren't used to cremations, and we'd been told the service should be no more than 30 mins, I had visions of the bells blaring and people thinking that crematoriums rang bells after the 30 minutes and they'd all get up and start leaving as Dave Gilmour blared "Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day..." I had to ask my niece to run down to the staff and ask them to turn it down before it started but the thoughts of the absurdity of the situation left me smiling through the tears.
Smiling through the tears, a good way to describe how I'll forever feel about Anne's passing. I still can't quite believe it's happened, and I know I'll be saying those words for many years to come. I find myself breaking down at the stupidest of times and having to walk back to the car, or to a bathroom just to let the tears out, as breaking down in the middle of a shopping centre is never fun. Seeing jewellery she'd like in a shop, someone who has the same perfume as her, and occasionally, from nowhere, the thought comes that my Aunt is gone from us and nothing can ever change that.
July 31st should've been her 54th birthday. In years gone by, inevitably I'd text either on the day or a day or few later and receive a thankful reply, one which usually referred to her as "the worst Godmother" on account of the fact that she would forget about mine. No matter how often I said it, I could never seem to persuade that she wasn't a bad Godmother, and besides-how could she judge that when technically, she'd never been called into play as both my parents were alive when I was 18?! I loved those moments in conversation, in text, in person, via her phonecalls with Mum, because somehow, they only served to emphasise her love for me.
Suffice to say, I never once envisaged a future where they'd both still be here and she wouldn't be. She's over 20 years younger than Dad, and 14 years younger than Mum-why would I ever have imagined she'd be gone before them? And yet, she is.
Last year, on her birthday, I texted her very early in the morning, as I was in the hospital after my knee replacement, and she was due to pick me up when I was discharged. In her reply, she said she'd forgotten it was her birthday! It was long day, and we had to stop off to pick up my sick brother in Maynooth and bring him to Mullingar-without telling my Mum, who was at my brother Sean's bedside as he had just started his chemo that week.
When we finally got back to Sligo, we had a cuppa and a wee birthday cake whilst discussing my brother's chemo and my knee and the wee holiday that she & Uncle were about to embark on in their new camper van. It wasn't the perfect birthday for Anne by any means, but, looking back at that day, it epitomised her. She'd spent all the day with family, starting the day at her big brother's house and finishing the day at her big sister's house. She spent it looking after nieces and nephews, being full of wit and kindness, and loveliness throughout the long, long day-all that was missing was my Uncle, and how I wish he'd gotten to spend some of the day with her.
We never know how life is going to turn out, and those little things, which seem so small, so insignificant, suddenly take on new meaning when someone we love passes away. Now everything is heightened, everything is different, our world is changed, "changed utterly."
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