Death has nothing to do with going away.....

October 22nd  - The Saturday afternoon before Robin died, waiting for him to wake up  so we could go for a drive, my sister and I walked in the churchyard opposite Lucerne house and found these fallen fruits from a huge spreading 'strawberry tree'  strewn all over the graves.... soft pompom hearts,  red clown noses....sweet mouthfuls of unexpected joy.....unimagined bounty.

I seesaw my way through the day....endless decisions to make but always some reassuring angel there on the end of the phone saying no, don't order more sandwiches, or yes, I will call the funeral directors  for you  and make the changes on the order of service. 

  Or by my side in the shop saying yes, that dress suits you...no that one isn't quite right.

Or the angel in my kitchen this afternoon saying, this is a better sentence than that one and yes you can find a way to say what you want about Robin in 5 minutes.

Then I open a beautiful card from dear friends with this poem by Rumi written out by hand.

On the day I die when I'm being 

carried toward the grave, don't weep.

Don't say, "He's gone! He's gone!"

Death has nothing to do with going away.

The sun sets and the moon sets,

But they are not gone. 

Death is a coming together.

The tomb looks like a prison, 

but really it is a release into union.

The human seed goes down in the ground.....

it grows and comes up full

of some unimagined beauty.

Your mouth closes here

And immediately opens

with a shout of joy there.

And it soothes and comforts me for a little while...as I try and get my head around the idea that he isn't gone....and I wish I could feel him in the sun and the moon....I wish I could remember, as one of his carers wrote so beautifully about about him today,

I hope you can take comfort in the fact that Robin is now all around us, in the beautiful trees he once admired so greatly and in the hearts of all those lucky enough to have met him.

but mostly I just feel bereft, untethered ....lost in the echoing empty space he has left in the tatters of my heart.

One of Robin's Weird and wonderful....