Mourning

Ken Clarke, Marna Clarke and Bruce Clarke, March 21 2009 at our (2nd) wedding.

From the first major loss, every next one recalls all that came before. Losses accumulate, each nestled in the others, blending in a blurred-edge reassurance that life truly is precious.

My dad - always anxious to start trips early - went first. Then my grandmother, then a trio of two aunts and one uncle in rapid succession all in 1989. Then there was a pause. More than a decade passed without anyone I knew closely slipping the bonds of the mortal coil. In 2005, Mom died. The very next year, a man I barely knew who worked in my office suddenly passed away. I went to his funeral and wrote about it in November 2006:

My newly-established group of near-strangers/co-workers at the Ministry of the Environment had this week to collectively cope with the sudden and unanticipated death of a colleague. 

I had met him – his name was Shiv Sud; he was from India, had a wife, two beautiful daughters 18 and 20 years old, and a son 8 years old .... 

... Shiv’s Hindu service was held on Saturday, November 11, in the Crematorium Building at Mount Pleasant Cemetery. I got there what I thought was fifteen minutes early, but the chanting had already started.... The man sitting next to me knew the chant. I listened to him for a while, got the gist and chanted along until we all stopped to listen to speeches. 

One speech came from Shiv’s daughters. Well, one daughter sobbed out in a clear, strong and heart-broken voice a beautiful speech about her father while her sister wept on her shoulder and while a man – an uncle or friend of the family – reached over a couple of times to press a giant white handkerchief to her face to dry her eyes.

The counselor called into our offices to help the staff manage Shiv's passing had mentioned that even people who did not know the deceased co-worker might return in these times to unexhausted wells of grief from other losses in the past.   

I was overcome at Shiv's service with grief for Mom and Dad.  

The death of Bruce's mom, Lois Marna Clarke is the most recent reassurance of how precious is life. She passed away early in the morning on December 13, 2016. She'd been in the hospital a month already. We were all hoping - and expecting - her to recover from bones fractured in a fall. But, instead, for any number of causes that could have just as easily happened at home, she suffered a bowel rupture, became septic, survived a last-ditch surgery in an attempt to save her life, but died about twelve hours later.

Here's the link to the funeral home page.

Thanks for reading.

Karen