Thank you all so much. Thank you Mooh for refreshing the Bede Jarrett prayer - I remember now how it struck me as being so beautiful. I will write later about my mother and her incredible bravery and strong willpower to overcome setback after setback. This feisty lady, born 1919, is now at peace, among old friends again and, I believe, not very far away at all.

My daughter Isobel and I are now preparing the funeral service. Isobel is going to play the flute (She's just passed Grade 8 having only just turned 16 - forgive me for being a proud mum) and I am going to read this - "A Parable of Immortality" by Henry Van Dyke:

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength, and I stand and watch until at last she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other. Then someone at my side says, 'There she goes !'

Gone where ? Gone from my sight - that is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was shen she left my side and just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of destination. Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says, 'There she goes !' there are other eyes watching her coming and their voices ready to take up the glad shouts 'Here she comes !'

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With Love and special thoughts to those of you have also lost someone recently,
- jeanie