She is just away

Away

I cannot say and I will not say

That she is dead, she is just away.

With a cheery smile and a wave of hand

She has wandered into an unknown land;

And left us dreaming how very fair

It needs must be, since she lingers there.

And you-oh you, who the wildest yearn

From the old-time step and the glad return-

Think of her faring on, as dear

In the love of there, as the love of here

Think of her still the same way, I say;

She is not dead, she is just away.

James Whitcomb Riley

She is not dead, she is just away. 

My mother passed away in the early hours of Thursday morning. I hoped to get to her grave side in time to bury her, but death and grief have a way of crushing our hopes, even when they are as limited as standing by my family as we bury our mother. 

Like much else in life my family did this thing without me. 

For I went away, and while I found life and love and laughter far away, it meant I was gone away. I chose to go away, I chose to stay away, I chose to live my life away, and now I must face grief in a place that is far away. So I find myself so far away, as I bear the news that now my mother too has gone away, to a place of infinitely more life and love and laughter, but it also means she too is gone away. 

But there are many things worse than being away. There is a lingering in deadly agony, having grief dripped out in IV fluid bags, accompanied by morphine drips of despair, lost to the living but remaining, a husk of what could be, but will never be again. I am deeply grateful my mother was permitted to go away before the loss was so long awaited that no tears could be left for her departing. 

I am away, yet very near. I am away, yet where I belong. I am away, yet still rooted in my origins. 

My mother too is gone away, but is still very near, gone to where she belongs, yet her roots remain in the rocky fields of Antrim’s glens. 

I wonder now that she has passed beyond us and is far away, if she is again the black haired beauty running barefoot across the glens counting sheep and cattle for her father? Has she again that boundless celtic passion, skipping across the babbling brooks of her unbounded glens in search of life and love and laughter? 

She has gone away, to where her parents wait, untouched by war’s dementia or poverty’s palsied grip. Her brothers and sisters bestir themselves from their repast to welcome their baby sister as she at last rejoins their family’s cast. Her infant daughter, dead for almost fifty years, raises her deep brown eyes and hugs her lost mother who has been so long away. 

And in time, her rustic champion will leave his bounded bed of grief, and join her in the heavenly glens, young again and strong, unfettered by the links of weakened bodies aged too soon by labor’s harsh lash. But as yet my father remains, although I think perhaps he aches to be away, to join his bride and run again unhindered across the glens that birthed their love and witnessed its passion defy the doubts and sneers of lesser lovers. Their wealth lay in their togetherness, yet one of them is now away. Gone ahead, unfettered by the leaching loss that is a weakened mortal coil. 

She is not dead, she is just away.