Mark was my precious only brother. I didn't appreciate him enough when he was alive as I assumed he would always be there. I wish I had taken the opportunity to spend more time with him.
I have got a lifetime of good memories though. My earliest memory was seeing him as a newborn baby asleep in his pram and trying to wake him up.
Sometimes we argued but not often and we always stuck up for each other if someone else was unkind.
We had a lovely childhood and I remember holidays and sunny days as we wer growing up. We shared friends and spent a lot of time together, up to all sorts of mischief usually!
He always knew how to make me laugh with his dry humour and he was great fun to be around with an addictive personality.
A little part of me died with him and the grief at my loss is sometimes hard to bear. Every day he is in my thoughts, from the moment I wake until last thing at night.
Mark I love you and feel lost without you in my world. May you be safe now in God's arms until we meet again one day.
The family is not destroyed,
but transformed.
A part of it enters the invisible.
We believe that dying leads to absence,
when it really is a hidden presence.
We believe that it creates infinite distance,
when it does away with all distance
it returns to the spirit
what was for a time found in the flesh.
Every time someone leaves home and passes away
those left behind gain a link in heaven.
Heaven
is no longer home to angels,
unknown saints and a mysterious God,
but it becomes familiar.
It is the family house,
the house up above, so to speak.
From up there to down here,
memory, helping hands, calls
carry on.
F. Sertillanges
alison williams
1st April 2009
