All Over

Events in recent months have brought me face to face with the process of grief.
I remember in my 2 years as a new curate doing the traditional Curate's role of taking the lion's share of the funerals - sitting with the dying, sitting with the bereaved, burying and cremating and praying and processing death, and patiently holding on to the people left behind while they came back to life again. When someone dies, especially when it's an untimely death, it makes you acutely aware not only of their absence, but also of your own mortality.

It's a particularly odd feeling to lose a peer, a close friend - you feel like you're looking at life down the wrong end of a telescope, or as if the real world is somehow on a screen and you're observing from a distance. Not quite out-of-body, but a distorted view of reality all the same. Everything changes, and nothing changes. Your life stands still, yet everyone else's life inexplicably goes on.

These are some words I wrote some years ago when a friend died suddenly and unexpectedly.

I don't think I'm ready for this
The darkness has put out your light
You were there and then you were gone
And now I can't make the pieces fit
I don't want to believe that it's true -
it's all over.

I don't think I'm ready for this
The thread I'm holding onto is thin,
Would somebody please wake me up -
It feels like I'm living in a dream,
I'm cold, and I'm sad, and I'm scared,
all over.

When the rain comes down, be my shelter,
When the storms rage on, be my rock, be my anchor.

They say that the anger will fade into sadness,
They say the pain won't last for ever,
Hold onto me, hold onto me...

I don't think I'm ready for this,
Everything goes on as before,
The sun comes up the world turns around,
I don't know what they're doing it for.
Only I am frozen in time,
All over.

When the rain comes down, be my shelter
When the storms rage on, be my rock, be my anchor.
(c) 1993 Thankyou Music