Faith and Bereavement – Remembering Mum.

I am feeling particularly reflective at today. Those who know me well will know it doesn’t take much but I am feeling particularly reflective today because today is 8 years since my mum died.

It’s a strange day really, it’s not a date that had any huge significance to me, or to her, when she was alive but now it is a day that marks something utterly life altering for me. It is a marker for what feels like two very different spheres of my life; life with her and life without her.

Today I am remembering her in the beautiful pink cherry blossom, one of her favourites, that is blooming on the trees in my street. Appreciating the variety of pinks and white in the blossom somehow bring my heart peace, as if in some way she were closer because she too loved their beauty as I do.

They remind me of time spent together and conversations we had, the laughter and fun, tears and sadness too. I am reminded of one particular conversation that we had in the last year of her life when, in the depth of my own depression and anger at God, she gently and lovingly asked me to “give God another chance”, firmly believing He would not let me go. Believing He would hold on to me tightly in the darkness of my soul, as he had done for her in her own times of darkness.

My mum was not a great spiritual leader or a renowned preacher, in fact she was more comfortable being inconspicuous in the shadows, but she was a very faithful pray-er, in fact the words on her gravestone are “A Woman of Prayer”.

When she died it catalysed, what I would describe as, the death and resurrection of my own faith. At the time, her death felt like the final nail in the coffin of my belief in God. I was just recovering from my own depression and was just beginning to feel somewhere closer to myself again when the rug was pulled out from under me and a sledgehammer of pain hit me full force, slamming me down so I felt I might never get up again, I might never recover.

The only response I could make, the only thing that seemed to make any sense was that this ‘God thing’ was one great big giant lie and I simply could not, would not, believe it anymore.

I tried very hard to strip away the ‘God stuff’ from myself, I tried to rationalise any belief as nurture, as church social conditioning, as upbringing but try as I might I found I couldn’t unbelieve something that I felt, deep down in the core of myself, to be true.

So I began the long and ongoing journey of repainting my faith, of reshaping my relationship with God. It is very much an ongoing journey, one which I expect I will share more of on this blog as time goes on, but this repainting and reshaping began with the words of my kind and compassionate mum, I decided to “give God another chance”.

For many reasons, this being one of them, I am so very grateful to have had her as my mum. I am thankful for her wise and kind words, of which there were many over the years, and while I miss her every day, I am thankful that I had her in my life at all.

I am so proud to be the daughter of Helen Turner and if I have even half the courage, gentleness and depth of faith she had, I will be blessed indeed.