Readings – Isaiah 52: 7–10; Luke 24: 13–31
“Now all the world she knew is dead
In this small room she lives her days
The wash-hand stand and single bed
Screened from the public gaze.”
The poem ‘House of Rest’ is not one of Betjeman’s more famous poems, but it is a lovely and profound one. It describes the life of a very infirm rector’s widow living in a nursing home. She spends her days living in her memories of the husband and children with whom she once shared an active, happy, life.
“Lincoln, by Valentine and Co.,
Now yellowish brown and stained,
But there some fifty years ago
Her Harry was ordained;
[…]
Aroused at seven, to bed by ten,
They fully lived each day,
Dead sons, so motor-bike-mad then,
And daughters far away.”
Death is part of all of our lives, yet we dislike contemplating it. That’s why we’re so keen to use euphemisms to describe death – passing away, departing from us – but death is as unavoidable and as real as it gets.
Funerals over recent decades have, on average, become much more jolly affairs, much more inclined to be celebrations of life than means of helping people process the overwhelming cocktail of experiences and emotions that proximity to death involves. It is almost as if a society where few people really believe in an afterlife doesn’t want to deal with how final and overwhelming death is.
Read more
