the death of a world

There's been another death in Kirkliston.

With the locum only starting on the 1st of June (and, in fact being away the weekend), I made the arrangements myself for the funeral later this week.

I was out there today to see the man whose mother died. She was 94, which is not doing badly at all, I'd say. Especially since she'd never had a day's ill-health until she hit her 90s.

The last few years have been a little harder and latterly the woman was confined within her home, a touch of some dementia setting in as well.

It's not been all that easy for her son, who's cared for her at home. On top of his day-time job.

He was saying how strange it is that no matter how you know so well a person's going to die (I mean, she's ill, she's 94, she's stuck in her bed at home and failing fast, that sort of thing), no matter how you work the whole thing through within your mind a hundred times - nonetheless when it finally happens and the person dies, you're still not prepared.

It's still a shock. It still leaves a gaping, desperate void. I know the feeling.

His mother's life reflected, I think, an era largely past. A certain rich simplicity of life we've nowadays largely lost.

She didn't ever travel abroad, or anything like that. She didn't see the need (whether or not she might have afforded it). She was simply content at home.

She lived in this house for the bulk of her married life - and was married for seventy years. Her home was her place of work and building a home her vocation in life.

The houses all backed onto each other around the square. And out in their gardens backing onto each other like that, they knew each other well.

A simpler, slower, more contented sort of life.

Where there's time and there's space for friendships to grow. Where the wonder of the outdoor life, the pleasures of a garden to be tended and enjoyed, the gentle satisfaction of a warm, inviting home - where all of these are woven into al the daily living of a person's life.

I think her son was mourning not only his mother's death, but maybe the loss of the lifestyle she long had embodied before his watching eyes.

It's really very interesting having links like this with the folk out at Kirkliston. It's the contrast, in many ways, between the city and the country. And the life that goes with each.

Our world's become so urbanised. And much that's good's been lost. I think it's basically those glimpses of that ancient, slower 'country' life I notice when I make these little forays out to Kirkliston.

A 'country' sort of life: the traces of 'community'. Although there are far more people in the crowded, milling cities of our modern world - what's most times lost is just this real community.

As I say, I think this man was somehow almost mourning the loss of something beyond his mother: or something, at least, of which his mother was so fully an embodiment.

I found myself caught up with him in this grief he plainly felt.

The loss of a mother. The loss of the world that she stood for. The loss of a whole way of life.

No wonder it's always a shock when somebody dies.