100TWC - Day 44: At Peace

The nascent heat of the summer morning enveloped her as she stepped from the air-conditioned interior of the limousine. She revelled in the warmth. Let it sink into her old bones as she stood, straightening slowly against the pain of her arthritic spine and hips. The driver walked around to return her pair of barley-twist walking sticks; family heirlooms handed down from a long forgotten forebear, but which felt especially apposite on this day. She thanked him graciously as he replaced his tall hat and preceded her into the chapel.

Through the door in front of her came the lilting sound of organ music. His favourite tune, played with somewhat less vigour than he would have preferred, she knew, and yet comfortingly familiar even at its funereal pace. She hesitated at the door, gathering her strength against the expected flood of emotion, but on stepping through onto the worn stone slabs of the aisle her only feeling was one of ineffable peace. Her gaze stretched along the aisle to the white-shrouded catafalque. White, because both he and she believed that death was not the end, not something to be mourned, but a new beginning for the one departed and therefore something, if at all possible through the maelstrom of grief and loss and pain, to be celebrated.

A ripple of muted voices passed through the seated mourners as the realisation of her arrival spread. All faces turned in her direction, some tear-streaked, some red-eyed, others grimly holding their grief in check. She smiled at each familiar face as she approached the empty front pew. No family waited there for her. Each of them had been only children and they had lost Geraldine more than fifteen years before to breast cancer. She was the last. Before taking her seat she paused beside the polished oak casket, laying a tentative hand on its lid. Peace at last my darling. After the months of late night nursing, cleaning up the sick and managing the medication, ignoring the pain-induced sniping and drying the tears, reading his favourite stories until the book fell unheeded from her sleeping hands, trying to persuade him to take one more mouthful of a meal he once relished. Peace. For both of them.

The vicar cleared his throat politely, bringing her back to the present. To the reality of the day. Reluctantly she took her hand from the coffin, kissed her fingers and brushed them back along its gleaming surface. The final few bars of music died away as she took her lonely seat on the family pew and reached forward to retrieve the tattered, leather-bound prayer book from its resting place.

In his best, most sincere and respectful tones, the vicar began his eulogy, but she wasn't really listening. The man had barely known him, and had gone through the usual motions of interviewing her the week before to garner sufficient details about him to make a decent fist of it. He wouldn't be saying anything she didn't already know. Her mind drifted, remembering the long cycle rides they had taken in their youth - on just such days as this. Fresh, bright, shining with possibilities. She remembered that queasy, excited, breathtaking feeling she felt when the first hints of love sparked unexpectedly, turning their next-door-neighbour friendship into something that would carry them through 60 years of togetherness. Weathering the storms of less sunny days, basking in the warmth of those which were even sunnier. The heartache of losing their only daughter, of knowing they would never bounce grandchildren on their knees or take them for walks in the fields at the end of their lane. The wonderful holidays they had shared covering the length of Britain, but never venturing to foreign countries; something they each agreed held no interest for them.

The sound of others getting to their feet brought her back to the moment as the organ struck up again for the first hymn. Another favourite of his -- and hers too. She smiled as she opened the right page and a gleaming finger of bright yellow light from the stained glass illuminated the first verse.