Final Rest

This is the last picture that I have with me and my Mother. It was taken after my convocation at the University of Western Ontario in the summer of 1984.

She never liked to be photographed and she would often turn her head away from the camera.

We gathered in the company of immediate family to honour her life on Friday afternoon at a memorial service held in St. Paul’s Anglican church. We made our way to the cemetery to place her remains at rest beside my father’s grave.

I asked those in attendance at the gravesite to take a few moments of silence to remember her life. I then read from Romans 8 verses 35 – 39:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”?

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

My sister and I then placed the urn that held my mother’s remains into the grave. My sister had a single red rose and laid that flower beside the urn. And we each, in turn, took a small measure of earth to begin the process of closing over the open grave.

And then it was done.