Thank you Kathy K for the reassurance. Thankfully I am in a place where I know that in all things there is a lesson for me - even if its just to be kinder to my kids when they make mistakes. Mercy, mercy, mercy. One of my funny memories from that day is of me later telling Mam's doctor what had happened. She then scrambled around to find a piece of paper and pen and wrote a note to me saying 'the hearing is the last thing to go', and then after my mother died I hid the note - just in case!
Have you ever read this poem by a Welsh Catholic poet called Saunders Lewis? One of my favourites: To the Good Thief You did not see Him on the mountain of Transfiguration Nor walking the sea at night; You never saw corpses blushing when a bier or sepulchre Was stuck by his cry. It was in the rawness of his flesh and his dirt that you saw Him, Whipped and under thorns, And in his nailing like a sack of bones outside the town On a pole, like a scarecrow. You never heard the making of the parables like a Parthenon of words, Nor his tone when He talked of his father, Neither did you hear the secrets of the room above, Nor the prayer before Cedron and the treachery. It was in the racket of a crowd of sadists reveling in pain And their screeches, howls, curses, and shouts That you heard the profound cry of the breaking heart of their prey: `Why hast thou forsaken me?' You, hanging on his right; on his left, your brother; Writhing like skinned frogs, Flea-bitten petty thieves thrown in as a retinue to his shame, Courtiers to a mock king in his pain. O master of courtesy and manners, who enlightened you About your part in this harsh parody? `Lord, when you come into your kingdom, remember me,' The kingdom that was conquered through death. Rex Judaeorum; it was you who saw first the vain Blasphemy as a living oracle, You who first believed in the Latin, Hebrew and Greek, That the gallows was the throne of God. O thief who took Paradise from the nails of a gibbet, Foremost of the noblitas of heaven, Before the hour of death pray that it may be given to us To perceive Him and to taste Him.
