Pat Courtney: caoin

Lord, you are hard on mothers;
We suffer in their coming and their going.

This is a line taken from a poem written by Paraic Pearce, the leader of the Dublin Uprising in 1916. It was his effort to try and explain the pain of a mother in the senseless death of so many young men in that uprising. I say it is an effort, for Pearce and other men do not fully understand the pain of their ‘coming’ or the even greater pain of their ‘going’. We have an expression in the Gaelic language called a caoin. Perhaps the nearest translation in English is a wail of lament. In that cemetery on that Friday when beloved Ester was laid to rest, I heard that caoin. This was a mother’s cry and it struck deep. I can only imagine what caused that caoin. I cannot experience what caused that caoin.

I have memories of Ester. My wife, Marguerita, worked with Angela in a comprehensive school in north London. Ester and my son were about the same age. They were friends and both families became great friends. We were all present at her Bat Mitzvah. How powerful that voice was!

This beautiful purple princess, plucked from life, has given more to fellow human beings than most of us could do in a lifetime. I do not understand the mind of God. She has left all of us with her wit, laughter and a deepness of soul that only God can understand.
She is at peace. Angela suffers in her ‘going.’

"As for ourselves, save us by your hand, and come to my help for I am alone, and have no one but you, Lord. You have knowledge of all things………and free me from my fear." (Esther 4.17)

Ruth Sinclair: hearts of flesh

‘Esterthepurpleprincess.blogspot.com’

No, somehow that still reduces you to words. Not quite like it did a month ago, but even so, still. It’s getting more real, but it is still not the bright, vibrant, caring, compassionate, kind, lively, intelligent person who will never leave us, who will always be in our hearts. It minimises you, and especially at a time like this we do not want you minimised, reduced to essentials. It isn’t even the essential you. There was so much more to you than that. Oh, Ester … you leave us with broken hearts, shattered hearts, hearts that will never be the same again. We would never have been the same anyway, having known you; you never left anyone the same, but made an impact on each life you touched.

But God – Baruch HaShem – has promised to be particularly close to the broken-hearted, to bind up the broken-hearted. It’s part of His job description. So says David haMelech, so says Isaiah, but the prophet Ezekiel says that He will take out our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh. Then He is going to write His Law on our hearts … but it is so much easier to write on stone than on flesh! I can’t believe stone hurts like flesh hurts, either. And we are hurting. Badly. So badly. You? Are you free of pain now? Or do you feel our pain? In life you felt our pain. You noticed, when no-one else did. You cared. You came. You were there. You laid aside your own pain, your own cares, for everyone else. It didn’t matter who it was, it didn’t matter what the pain; you felt it, you ministered.

I do so hope you are out of pain now. You have gone ahead of us, so you know things we don’t. Do you? I hope so. You are in a place none of us has visited. Can you read our blogs? Still feel our hearts? Perhaps, perhaps not; it doesn’t detract from our love for you. That is still real, and we are still grateful, so grateful, for the privilege of having known you.

A few days after you left us Radio 4 carried an item about nose jobs. They described smashing the bone of the nose … not pretty. Thinking about how God takes out our hearts of stone, and replaces them with hearts of flesh … the principle is the same … First, of course, He has to smash that original stony heart, so cold, so hard, so unresponsive, so self-protective. Yours was not cold, not unresponsive, not self-protective. What happened to make you so empathetic – or was it hereditary? But for those of us with a different heritage, He has to smash the stone of our hearts if He wants to make anything useful of us. Is that why He snatched you from us, so unutterably brutally? He is not a brutal God; He is a loving God! How could He allow it? It makes no sense, it is so out of character!

We scream in agony as our hearts are smashed – but then, in His infinite mercy, He begins to patch them up again, so that they are able to go on beating – albeit to a slightly different tune. We still hurt, we hurt so much, even as He joins up the broken fragments, using flesh as the ‘glue,’ so it sounds different to a physician. But He doesn’t want any stone left, so as soon as the heart is beating OK and the blood circulating again, it seems that He may smash some more of the bits of stone. We see it in action on any building site ... but on a building site it is academic. When we ourselves are under the anvil we can’t stand it; at a time like this, the pain feels too great to bear.

That’s how we feel – so how about your mother, your amazing mother? You would be so proud of her now, she whose calling, like Deborah, is to be ‘a mother in Israel,’ and yet whose natural child has been so cruelly taken from her in an instant. She with whom you made such a brilliant team, she from whom you inherited your big heart, your compassionate nature, your caring for the one who is despised, rejected, oppressed, afflicted, the asylum seeker, the refugee, the outcast, she who taught you to notice and to nurture the underdog, to feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, to take in the stranger, to clothe the naked, to visit the sick, to go to the prisoner. We hurt for her, too, immeasurably, although we know that her calling is bigger than that, that she has many, many more children than you, many, many more, throughout the world, who love her deeply as a mother, whose lives she has influenced and will continue to influence for good. As she taught you, you enlarged her; as she teaches others, your influence will flow through her and continue in her, so that, in and through her you will never be forgotten. She is not you, nor would we want her to be; she is herself. We love you both, individually, for who you both are, interlinked but independent, two very special women, unforgettable, always in our hearts.

This was supposed to be a reminiscence of you. It’s still a sea of pain, such pain – ‘Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? … Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!’