Despatches, Matches, Hatches by Sandra Horn
I detest the word ‘closure’ when it is applied to bereavement – it’s meaningless. It is usually used when a milestone has been reached along the journey from the loss; a sense that something significant has been achieved that was left undone before. It’s a step, not an end. I was thinking about it particularly at a family ceremony earlier this year. Almost forty years ago, my youngest brother and his wife had a stillborn child. There had never been the money for the kind of memorial they wanted/needed, until then. We met, all of us, in the pouring rain to bury our parents’ ashes in the baby’s grave and to witness the completion of the lovingly-chosen headstone and the ‘dressing’ of the grave. We needed words. I read Kathleen Raine’s beautiful poem ‘Spell of Sleep’. It begins , Let him be safe in sleep As leaves folded together As young birds under wings As the unopened flower. And ends, Let him be healed in sleep In the quiet waters of night ...