Yesterday evening when I was Zooming away with a friend in the kitchen, Col appeared to tell me that Jo, my sister's stepdaughter, had just died. We knew it was coming. She was in palliative care in hospital, and had been unconscious for the last day. Which was probably merciful. Matthew was there, and Helen. Nute was not allowed to visit because of the Covid crisis.
But still somehow we did not expect it to be quite so soon.
She was part of the family for a long long time. And I thought I would put one of her poems in my blog today as a memorial to her.
It was read at her father's funeral last year.
Here Comes the Autumn
by Joanna Reah
Here comes the autumn
visiting my garden again
making his presence felt
by sweeping the leaves
off my honeysuckle
and clematis,
dragging them off the branches
into the air to perform
their last dance
before folding
onto grass, below,
leaving a skeleton
of twisting vines
intricately woven
round each side
of the trellis.
A delicate pattern
against the blue, September sky
filling out the spaces
with its deep, rich colour
dotted at random
by a clutch of decaying berries
or an occasional splash
of surviving greenery
ready to drop
to the ground
at its cue
from behind
the final curtain.
This was the last time we saw her, at Ken's funeral. She was only in the Autumn of her life too.
Ken and Jo, father and daughter, loved and appreciated and praised the beauty of the creation, and I hope that when the time comes, the Creator, Jehovah, will wake them from the dreamless sleep of death, and they will open their eyes in this lovely earth again. Only it will be a very different earth then - it will be the earth we pray for when we ask for God's Kingdom to come.
And Jo, always a lover of animals, will be so happy to find that nature is no longer "red in tooth and claw", but that all the creation is at peace again, as it was in the beginning, in Eden.
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