THIS SIDE OF THE SUNLIT WOOD

Yesterday, I went to the funeral of the lady who died. I took my parents with me; they knew and loved Irene, living as they did, just around the corner.

We arrived in the warm spring sunshine.

Who looks after crematoriums? They’re always immaculate but you never see anyone there, cutting the grass, unlocking the building, setting the chairs out.

Ah well. The funeral directors seemed to know what needed to happen. At the appropriate moment, they carried in the handsome wicker casket, and a recording of Amazing Grace piped up, as we sombrely followed.

I always get such a mixture of feelings at these things. Sadness of course, but joy too - Irene was a believer who lived a good life and knew where she was going. In remembering her through the photos and eulogies and reflections, there was a lot to smile about.

As someone pointed out, people live on in the many lives that they touched. That would have made her smile, I reckon.

There was a screen in the crematorium. It displayed a photograph of a sunlit wood; tall birch trees striking up to a canopy of translucent green. Through their slender trunks, the golden sun beamed slanted rays of beautiful evening sunshine onto the ferns of the forest floor.

I thought I saw those ferns move at one point; ruffled by a warm breeze perhaps, stirred by something otherworldly. Was the sun setting? Was it rising? Was that deep blue sky behind the trees the faded azure of sunset, or the lightening sky of a brand new day?

I pictured opening my eyes as I lifted my head above the ferns. There would be birdsong I imagine, and the smell of leaves, and the sound of summer on the wind.

“Death is just a chauffeur,” said the minister calmly, “It carries us from one place…” and he paused as though pondering the thought for the first time, “… to another.”

I was still in the softness of the birch-wood. Poor Irene. Poor family left behind. Poorer world; richer heaven.

I’d quite like the ‘chauffeur’ to give me a bit of a warning when he’s outside, rather than have him break into my bedroom and stop my heart beating, or bundle me into a hospital bed and tap the life out of me. Just a little honk of the horn perhaps? Give me time to call a few people for a proper goodbye and see you laters?

Though I think if Irene had had that, she’d still be on the phone now. She liked to talk. And she had a lot of people to talk to.

We shuffled out into the sunshine, leaving the fading tones of Andrea Bocelli singing ‘Time to Say Goodbye’ over that wicker casket. Out there, the sun was warm and the air buzzed with life. White fluffy clouds stacked along the tree line, and the yews and cedars waved happily beneath them.

We shook hands. We went to look at the flowers. We remarked about the service and the life lived. I thought about the wood.

I’d be okay, I reckon. If I woke up in that wood, I’d be okay. If Heaven started with a silver-lit sunrise, rubbing my eyes in the ferns between the birch trees would be, more than anything, the hope of all my life.

I can’t explain exactly why I think that. This side of the sunlit wood, I was shaking hands with people caught between loss and sadness, and it seemed to me that that’s a picture of this world - caught between loss and sadness, shaking hands on sunny days and learning how to grow around our grief.

I took my parents home. My heart though, was somewhere else for a while.