‘The birth of a baby is a miracle: here is a new person taking up her or his own space in the world. When a person dies, it is like a negative of the same image Photo: by Aron Visuals on Unsplash
Unhanded: Lucy Pollard offers some reflections on living and dying
‘Dust returns to dust. And yet. And yet.’
A very dear and longstanding friend emailed me recently to ask me to pray for Z, a young woman with two small sons who was dying of cancer. It isn’t unusual for us to share the names of those we are praying for, or holding in the light (my friend prefers not to use the Quaker phrase, because she is mindful of the kind of light torture that can be practised), but this request touched me particularly closely. Both my friend and I had breast cancer years ago, when our children were small, and the sense of panic about the possibility of leaving the children is still vivid to me. Who would know the important small things such as the bedtime rituals? Who would intuit what was distressing them when they couldn’t explain? We are both deeply grateful that we have been able to see our children grow up. Now that I’m eighty, I know that I may not live to see my grandchildren into adulthood, and for that reason I am writing about my life for them, and have started to keep a memory box for them to have after my death, if they are interested.
