It’s Halloween or All Hallow’s Eve, a feast of all saints and all souls.
This morning ‘Thought for the day’ on Radio 4 was delivered by Professor Tina Beattie :
“ ‘Death,’ said Hamlet, ‘is an undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns.’ These holy days seek to bridge the abyss between the live and the dead. Through rituals and imagination they are intended to assure us that those who have died are not beyond our companionship and our prayers.

No tradition can survive unless it is relevant to people’s everyday messy lives and gives meaning to their deepest struggles, sorrows and hopes. Death is the most sorrowful and messy reality of all. It’s a universal truth and the most impenetrable of mysteries.

As a culture we have been alienated from the power of hope to reconcile us to the helplessness and despair we feel when confronted by death. This feast brings us into communion with the dead, not to frighten us but to console. These feasts are an invitation to see what it means to be mortal and to seek reassurance that terrifying though death is, it is not the end. Love is more powerful than death and life, not death, will have the last word.”

2 meetings around Saagar today : one about the future and one about the past. Both called for reliving, retelling, revisiting the circumstances of his tragic death. It was too much! Lesson : plan only one meeting a day. Be kind to yourself.
That I survived the day is proof that love is more powerful than death and life, not death, will have the last word.