Terry, a practicing Catholic, took our service yesterday and commenced it in a striking way. “He had heard,” he said, “that we had suffered quite a few deaths recently and he wanted to remind us of Bonhoeffer’s great words”.

“There is nothing that can replace the absence of someone dear to us, and one should not even to attempt to do so. One must simply endure it. At first that sounds very hard but at the same time it is also of great comfort. For to the extent the emptiness truly remains unfilled one remains connected to the other person through it.

It is wrong to say that God fills the emptiness. God in no way fills it but much more leaves it precisely unfilled and thus helps us preserve even in pain – the authentic relationship.

Furthermore the more beautiful and full the remembrances, the more difficult the separation.

Gratitude transforms the torment of memory into silent joy. One bears what was lovely in the past, not as a thorn, but as a precious gift deep within, a hidden treasure of which one can always be certain.”

I was “gobsmacked”! I thought I knew Bonhoeffer but I had never heard those words before – or was it that I had heard them but they had never impacted on me as they did then? And what significant words they are!

The service proceeded in Terry’s gentle manner but I was not listening. I was busy processing Bonhoeffer’s words.  How true they are! “The unfilled emptiness.” The death of a loved one is not about a new beginning – either for them or us! It is a continuing of that which is precious, even if it be physically removed. How dumb can one be not to see that? The significance of death is in no way diminished. Indeed it is highlighted! It is simply restated in a “faithful” way. Death is not about life in some fanciful heaven, but its continuance in the lives it leaves behind. Does that diminish with death? No way! If anything death highlights its significance.

Am I rationalising Marg’s death? I don’t think so. It has more to do with the truth about life, the “existential” truth about death. Life, as I have said many times before, isn’t sitting in a box in a theatre watching the play take place on the stage. We are on the stage living it out, experiencing death as a reality that knocks on the door and to which we must respond, be it in a German concentration camp or in the emergency ward of a hospital.   And the way we respond to it goes to the heart of our existence.

Thanks be to Terry and Bonhoeffer! Not only have you made my day, you have made all days that remain ones in which I will remember that “the more beautiful and full the remembrances, the more difficult the separation.” I will remember Maggie as she was and I will try and “let gratitude transform memory into silent joy.”

Thank you Terry! I must remember to ask you what you said in the rest of the service!