Nearly a year ago as I write these words, Natalie died. It is the tradition in Judaism for a person’s headstone to be erected around the time of the first anniversary of their death. These are the words which I shared earlier this week with her and my immediate family.
The themes of absence, and what we understand as ‘normal’ are ones which I suspect I shall be returning to in time.
“Earlier this year, I was standing on the beach in Aberdovey – the village in Wales to which we as a family have returned each summer for the last five years – when I finally managed to name what it was that had been playing on my mind for some time.
As I stood there, I remembered the previous summer. I remembered the collective effort, not least by Nat herself, required to get us all there; I remembered the preparation, collecting prescriptions and medical equipment, registering with a local health clinic, contacting local pharmacies; I remembered how hard we all worked to do as much together as possible. And I remembered how normal that effort had become by that point and how heavily the cancer which blighted Nat’s life had lain on her and on us.
For me, it was only possible to come to terms with that weight, to see and begin to understand that weight, by being back in that place – a place which we as a family loved – without her.
I do not imagine that I am the first to come to understand the depth and contours of a relationship by the death of someone that you love. But it is in her absence that I now clearly see the things that made her my best friend and the woman who I loved.
Her kindness towards me, towards her parents and brother, and of course to her boys.
Her patience, a quality which I valued in her so highly, her ability to support me when I felt overwhelmed and needed it the most.
Her wisdom which guided us as a family and gave us the strength to negotiate all manner of challenges.
There are many more things I could say about Nat which now in their absence I begin to see clearly for what they were, not least the eccentricities and foibles which make us all more human. But I want to end with her smile, a smile which she shared with those with whom she was closest, and which could light up a room, a smile I remember from our time in Wales.
I remember how, with the end of what was to be our last holiday in Wales in sight, the four of us – Nat, Lev, Joel and I – made the trip up to our secret lake, a lake which she and I had first explored long before the boys were even born.
Famously, the four of us had been there in the driving rain, but that last time, the sun beat down on us. We had taken a picnic supper, it was about 7 o’clock but as it was the height of summer the sun was only just starting to dip down towards the Irish Sea which we could see spread out before us. And I can see Nat in my minds eye, smiling – her love for her family, her love being there, being there with us at that spot, radiating out in her smile, and I begin to understand those efforts that we made a little better.
And now here we are, and in a few moments we will be proceeding to Nat’s grave, but I invite you to share with me, and the rest of the family, and particularly the boys, your memories of Nat, and how we feel her presence so strongly though she is gone.”
Josh Cass 