Some thoughts on the evocative scent of lilac, praising its beauty, wondering why it’s considered unlucky and acknowledging its power to break through my brittle armour and wake up my my tender feelings.
It’s that dreamy time of year when, if you’re lucky enough to be walking down the street when the spring breeze takes a rest, your senses are filled with one delightful scent after another. Hawthorne, laburnum and wisteria blossom fill the air and turn our world to beauty. And laying overall, there is the scent of lilac, wafting across the road.
Is it just me, or is anyone else deeply affected by the scent of fresh lilac?
Maybe that’s why some people think it’s unlucky and refuse to allow it indoors.
When I was a student nurse in the old days, when fresh flowers were allowed on hospital wards, lilac was strictly forbidden!
Is it because it refuses to be ignored? Does it wake up unwonted and uneasy memories and feelings?
Well, I will bring lilac into my house any day, although I have found it a challenging friend.
In February 2013, my mam died.
In May of the same year, I was ambushed in my own garden.
I was happily pouring potato peelings into the compost bin and filling up the bird feeders, which hung by the lilac tree, when the beautiful sight and scent took me by surprise and broke into my closed-up heart.
Lilac opened the floodgates and let my tears fall. Lilac prised angry questions out of me:
What was going on? How could there be so much beauty without my mam to see and smell it? How dare spring, which she loved so much, blossom without her?
Beauty opened up the pain of loss.
Spring lilac greets me,
Breaking open my closed heart.
Beauty meets my loss.
After three years, I moved to another group of churches. It was painful to live in a place which mam didn’t know about, where no one knew I’d ever had a parent.
In the new Vicarage garden, two lilac trees enticed me when their buds first appeared, and I wondered what colour they would be.
When they unfurled into white and purple petals, I thanked God. Spring on spring, lilac doesn’t fail and I hadn’t left beauty behind.
Now, in a different home, no lilac grows in our retirement garden, but that’s OK. Gardens around us are profuse with it and its scent doesn’t recognise boundaries.
Purple, pink and white,
Lilac presents her beauty,
Knocking on my heart.
I thank God from the bottom of my heart for the beauty of lilac, which met me in the locked-up depths of grief and opened my heart up to life which persists, season by season.
What scents are most evocative for you?
Do you know why lilac is considered unlucky?
Wander well through spring,
Mandy.
Things I Love:
The scent of spring.
Lilac trees.
A vase of fresh flowers.
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An imaginative reflection of Good Friday, weaving in characters and miracles from Jesus’ life. An afternoon when the sun refused to shine and a chill ran through onlookers but when words of forgiveness, compassion, hope and trust were heard.This will be used in a church service, so may read a little differently to other blog posts.
Every public spectacle leaves debris behind. Concerts, rallies, executions, all leave their mark. After the excitement is over and the crowds have gone home, their litter is left for someone else to pick up or to blow across fields and hills, into hedgerows and gardens. Public spectacles do not end without trace.
That Friday in Jerusalem, was no different.
While three men hung dying on crosses, a small crowd gathered. There’d been some jeering, men were in a volatile mood, ready to celebrate their people’s freedom, but as the afternoon became surprisingly dark and cold, they quietened down and shivered.
One by one, they drifted away, earlier than expected. That afternoon, home held more appeal than usual because lamb was roasting, and wine was waiting to be poured.
So, the crowd thinned, leaving picnic remains behind. Bread and fish scattered on the hill outside the city. That day, there was no one to make sure everyone was fed or that the leftovers were gathered up, with nothing wasted.
An older woman felt her recently found energy dropping and she clutched her middle in fear of the old pain returning. There was nothing else to grab hold of. The man who’d called her daughter was gasping for breath and his own energy was bleeding away. The robe which had brought her life and health lay muddied and bloodied, coveted by the gambling soldiers
One man limped away, an old pain returning to haunt him. Weeks ago, he’d sprung up from the ground, picked up his sleeping mat and strode away with Jesus’s forgiving and healing words ringing in his ears, but now he thought he’d have to walk alone.
A young woman’s hot tears spilled down her cheeks. She lived because Jesus had spoken up for her and rescued her from the murderous mob, but no one had spoken up in his defence and from a distance she’d watched the deadly blows that she’d been spared rain down on him.
A man who’d been born blind and another who’d been born deaf covered their eyes and ears and wished they couldn’t see or hear what was happening. The hands that had touched them with healing were nailed to a cross.
February is such an evocative month for me. It begins with remembering a birth and ends with remembering death. It is all part of life and love.Here is part of the story of my parents’ deaths. I’ve written it in love and hope.The photos were all taken in the last week of February, in Sherwood Forest, which is a place they both taught me to love.
What did you say?
Wednesday 28th February 1990 lives on as a grey blustery day in my memory. I was walking up Haydn Road in Nottingham, alongside my friend. We’d both left two children in school and were wheeling our toddlers along in pushchairs. We chatted about the day ahead. I was looking forward to having my hair cut and helping at the Toy Library before the end of school. I was thinking about my dad who was going to hospital that day and my husband who was calling in to help him get up and ready for the ambulance.
Life can change in an instant.
A car pulled up alongside us and my husband jumped out. I was confused, the car was my brother in law’s, and he stayed behind the driving wheel.
There was no easy way to say it.
“Mandy, your dad’s died”.
I am sorry to say I was cross.
“What did you say?”
To my left, my friend gasped “Oh Mandy”,and her hand was over her face.
This was not unexpected, but it was the shock of my life. Lung cancer had done its work as predicted and taken a year from diagnosis to the end.
As I’ve said before, I am blessed with good family and friends. We all bundled into the car, pushchairs, friend, toddlers and all and my brother-in-law drove us home.
My friend took in my two-year-old daughter and promised to look after her and fetch her brothers from school.
Cancelling.
At home, I made phone calls to cancel the hairdresser’s appointment and apologise to the Toy Library coordinator. I found my address book in case I needed to make more calls from mam’s phone, then we left my day and all my carefully made plans and I was driven into a strange, sad and scary new world.
There were no mobile phones.
See this link for more about the part my hairdresser played.
Twenty-three years later, on Wednesday 27th February 2013, I spent a freezing cold day in Coventry Cathedral. We sat with our overcoats on, listening to distinguished speakers talking about conflict and how it could be a positive, creative thing if we’re not afraid of it and how it can be destructive when it’s ignored. It’s not a lesson I’ve learnt very well.
I enjoyed the day, I met some old friends from theological college and in the evening, we ate a delicious meal before we listened to the after-dinner speakers.
This was a two-day conference, and I stayed overnight in a travel lodge. I had been obedient to the rules and kept my phone switched off all day and evening. When I walked away from the cathedral into the strange city, I switched my phone on and got another shock which sent me reeling.
It lit up with messages to call my husband, but my brother had left a voicemail with the news:
“Mandy, I’m so sorry, mam’s died.”
Guilt.
I was full of shock and guilt that I hadn’t been there and was the last to know. I spent the night awake, alone in a strange place and fought the urge to just walk out into the dark, I was so desperate to get home.
She had fooled us all. There had been many times when we were told she didn’t have long to live. There were mornings when I’d woken up convinced I’d slept through a phone call from the hospital calling me in to her bedside. Indeed, eighteen months previously she’d been admitted to a nursing home with only three months to live!
A couple of evenings before I went away, I’d sat with her and together we filled in a questionnaire about what sort of music she liked, what work she’d done and where she’d been on holiday. I think the nursing home staff thought she was there to stay!
In the end, I believe she did what she wanted, and passed away quietly in her sleep, with none of us there.
Full of apologies.
In Coventry, after a sleepless night, I dutifully went back to the cathedral and began apologising. I said sorry that I’d got to leave. I’d promised to show another woman the way to the train station, and I said sorry to her. Mam’s vicar was there, who was a good friend to her, and when I told him, I said sorry.
Happily, I was surrounded there by friends, for which I am grateful.
I walked to the train station, bought a new ticket and arrived home to a strange, sad and scary world.
Once more into the wilderness.
There is nothing like grief to banish you into a state of wilderness. With the loss of each parent, I felt exiled into a strange land, where I didn’t know my way around and didn’t know who I was. I was surprised at how physical it all was, with actual pain and infections, as if my body was grieving, one bit at a time. This is all part of loving someone and so I am grateful for it.
Thankfulness.
Thankfully, there were lots of glimmers of goodness along the way. I keep saying it, and I will say it again, I am blessed by my family and friends, and I thank them all for their kindness.
February.
February is such an evocative month for me, full of different aspects of love. It begins with memories of a birth and ends with memories of death, and maybe this is fitting for a month where darkness and light, winter and spring mingle.
See these links to read the happy stories of birth:
Whatever you are wandering through right now, wander well.
Mandy.
Things I love:
My parents, family and friends.
This quote from Saint Paul, which I believe: I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things to come, nor powers, nor heights, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Taken from Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter 8.
Wandering Through The Land Of Nod. 