Mothering Sunday (often incorrectly called Mother’s Day) in the UK in 2023 falls barely three months after my wife, Deborah, went to start her new adventures with Jesus. It is the next event, the mark in the Church’s and society’s calendar, that I am dreading.
It was whilst we were in our early thirties that we were
hit three times with the news that our pre-born babies were not to be given
life on earth. I recall so clearly Deborah saying to me that she was so sorry,
even though there was absolutely nothing she could have done to alter the
situation, with the same intonation that she used last year when she was dying
with the brain tumours. None of it was her fault and, indeed, I have tried to
think through what I had done wrong. I guess all we can do is leave it in the
hands of God.
Deborah would have been a brilliant mother – caring,
encouraging, inspiring – all the attributes that would come naturally to her. I
could observe it when I was fortunate to be on school outings, seeing her
pupils instinctively gravitate to her because of her warmth and her ability to
see the children as God saw them.
She was the godmother to two children, who have grown up to
be lovely young women. Deborah took her role seriously and always shared the
good news of Jesus with them. Indeed, we had the privilege and pleasure of
seeing one of the girls being baptised as a sign of her love for Jesus.
At the same time, although Deborah was a mother-type figure
to so many children and young people – in the family, amongst friends, in the
schools, in the churches – she found Mothering Sunday such an ordeal and a
heartbreak. When the flowers or the plants were handed out, it did not
compensate for our babies that she did not hold in her arms. She always felt a
fraud and had to be persuaded to take the flowers or plant that was being
handed out. It was not helped by the fact that we were turned down to be
adoptive and fostering parents due to circumstances not in our control.
The beauty of her being with our Lord and Saviour is that
she is now a mother. In her final all-school assembly, on the very day that she
was diagnosed with the brain tumours, she spoke about hope and perseverance,
the values that are so entrenched in biblical thought. The example that she
used was Hannah, the woman who was desperate to have a child and would
eventually see the fulfilment of the promise when she gave birth to a son who
would grow up to be the prophet Samuel. In a likewise manner, Deborah had been
promised motherhood, experienced the tears and trauma of not seeing the
fulfilment on earth, but now she is in heaven and is experiencing what it is to
be a mother.
As fir me, I am feeling bereft – more than that, I feel as
though I have been left behind. Not only id Deborah enjoying being with Jesus;
she is reunited with our children. I am still on earth, grieving the most
wonderful and godly woman.
On top of that, I have to navigate the minefield that seems
to be spread before me and that I know will blow me off course.
There is a degree of irony in that, for Deborah and myself,
Lent, Good Friday and Easter were our favourite times in the liturgical
calendar – far more so than Christmas which we could take or leave. The
mournfulness of Ash Wednesday this year chimed with great resonance to my
understanding and experience of the inevitability of death. Good Friday is
literally the crux of the matter, the reason why God lets us into heaven
because he has paid the price. Easter will be trickier, especially if the hymn
‘Thine be the glory’ is inevitably chosen as it reminds me of Deborah walking
down the aisle with her Dad at our wedding to the tune and because it was the
closing hymn at the service to celebrate Deborah’s life.
It seems as though I can navigate a course through the occasions
in the previous paragraph, but it is the huge blockade of Mothering Sunday that
seems to eclipse all of the other ones. Talk of thanking mothers, grandmothers,
great-grandmothers, guardians, foster mothers, adoptive mothers and other
mothering-type women will accentuate the sense of loss of my dear wife who is
so loved, cherished and adored by me, together with the bereavement in not
seeing our children. I can not attend another church on that Sunday as it seems
to be one of those days that is celebrated by churches of all hues. In
addition, I am bombarded by the displays in retail centres urging the sale of
goods for ‘Mother’s Day’ – all of which seem to rip at the scar which has not
even had the time to stop weeping.
An option would be to stand aside and try to avoid the
event as much as I can, even to absent myself from a church service. An
alternative would be to encounter it, to be prepared for the tears – to enable
my family, my friends, my church family to share in the wrenching, the reality
of a life in the fallen world where death destroys all that is good. In the
hubbub of happiness, there are the tears of torment and it is the road that
others, even if they cannot personally share my pain, can join in my sense of
loss.
I am looking forward to the day when my eyes are closed on
earth and I wake up in Emmanuel’s land, for me to finally see Jesus
face-to-face, to be once again with Deborah to worship and serve our Saviour,
and to look upon the faces of the ones I saw only on the scans. I will then
have no worries about confronting Mothering Sunday as I will be in the
comforting presence of my heavenly Father.
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