Thanks for calling yesterday and truthfully sharing your feelings. I appreciate your honesty and openness. May you ever remain so translucent. You have no idea how you are missed, how you fill every space with light, love and music. So many people were touched by your presence here. I never got to meet the magic/fighting/colleagues at work but I did meet teachers/Belgium Nadine/Catherine etc and they all speak of you as if you are belonged to them! I have no idea how you worm your way into people’s hearts but it is a mighty capacity. You had it at a young age. I remember Ursula returned from a long absence from the island and she spotted you across the room and both of you run to hug each other. I must admit to feeling jealous. I wanted her to have missed me as much!
My mum loved having you in her home. “So easy to live with and love”. Not a bad verbal portrait. Remember her telling you the story of the bird? Difficult, painful days when you were broken physically. I remember thinking how often can someone be de-cored like an apple until they bleed on a regular basis and not lose their very sanity. Life has been full of trauma for you. But your radiance has never faltered. You will ever be loved. As a wise man so eloquently put it, “if I was in a lost place and you were a complete stranger I'd want you to be my friend”. Likewise, if I was facing hell, I'd want no one else by my side.
I heard what you said about the Big city and the people. Don't underestimate big cities. I've always felt, even while visiting for a few days, in big cities, as if there was a glass ceiling and, not only could I not really pray but, God felt so distant. I know it wasn't because God moved away, so I put it down to that toxic big city effect. Perhaps, they are places so filled with pain, loss and suffering they hurt the heart. So totally the opposite of Jimmy and the Eleni’s vegetable garden and barbecue space in Rhodes. Remember that dirty, lonely space you are living in now, is surrounded by all the lovely places around the world filled with people who love you deeply and sincerely. Whose love you have had a chance to bathe in year after year. Then, feel for those city dwellers, “cities of bodies” rather than the “country of souls”. They may not have experienced Ursula's hugs, Jimmy’s roasted goat balls (and yes, they were real goat’s balls!), mum’s soda bread and pancakes, your nephew’s hugs (albeit squeezed out of him), grandad’s endless teasing or your dad’s wonderful food. Your family and friends are bound to you in ways that the lonely can only howl in anguish that they know not such brotherhood. Bonds tested in battles, blood stained with backs against the wall, against all odds.
I sat down at a table at Bucharest surrounded by strangers from Poland, Bulgaria, Kosovo and got talking to a young woman from the south of Poland. As we spoke, she looked familiar and I asked a few questions. She said she knew Sarah. Our Sarah! Then, I remembered visiting her home with Sarah on a two week trip in the 1990s in Poland. Suddenly, it was as if Sarah was sitting at the table beside us. My goodness the coincidences in life surprise and bewilder one. I am so grateful for having knowing Sarah and having seen her ability to love others. I remember us sitting together in a car and she confided to me that she missed her breast so much after the operation. Wondering what they had done with it. Burnt it, dumped it? We both sat and wept together for this lost breast. We can't do much for each other in this world at times. Sometimes we must just feel each other's pain and loss and just weep.
