Only One Ship is Seeking Us

Still feeling a bit weird - I assume from the two hours dental surgery.  Not that it was surgery for 2 hours - there was more preparations than actual wrenching and drilling - sorry I should have added a Keep Your Smelling Salts Handy alert before this paragraph.  But sitting there trying not to see all the wrenches needles hooks spanners-what-have-yous being lined up is a tad stressful too.

It underlines for me how old I am now.  My poor old body and brain don't cope so well with these things any more.

Anyway, the new teeth are still in place.  And it all hurts a lot less than it did before. So I am thankful for that.   And I am sleeping again.

Us siblings managed a get together on Thursday, and were joined by some of the children and grandchildren, which was a lovely surprise.

We turned on the TV at lunchtime, as when we are both home we have lunch together in front of Bargain Hunt, to find that Prince Philip has just died.  We both felt quite sad as he has always been there for the duration of our lives, as has the Queen.  The older you get, the more and more of your past goes over that edge - swept away by the tide.

A friend rang me to ask if I knew about it, and she told me that her husband did his National Service in the... would it be barracks in the Navy? ... anyway the same place as the young Prince Philip was stationed. Apparently he was popular there as they found him both friendly and polite.   I thought that was a good positive to put in my blog on the day he died.

And I feel a lot for the Queen, losing her partner of so many years. She may well be feeling very alone today.

Philip Larkin's poem  "Next Please"  gave me the title for this blog.  It ends:   

Only one ship is seeking us, a black-
Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back
A huge and birdless silence. In her wake
No waters breed or break.

But I would want to end on a more hopeful note.  Yes, the dead go down into "a huge and birdless silence".  But the Inspired Scriptures promise us that there can and will be an awakening from the dreamless sleep of death.

 “Your dead will live. My corpses will rise up. Awake and shout joyfully, You residents in the dust! For your dew is as the dew of the morning, And the earth will let those powerless in death come to life." - Isaiah 26:19