Via Cold Fury, Walter Meade’s mother has died, and his elegy is worth reading.

Earlier this week, the staff posted a notice on the blog that my mother’s life was nearing its end. She breathed her last around 11 PM on September 16; since then the family has been caught up in the grief and the business of a heavy loss. We held her funeral on Friday and committed her to rest next to her mother.

Now the hard part begins. My father, whose love for my mother steadily deepened through more than 62 years of marriage, must start his life again. They began to date seriously when both were in their late teens; she was the living heart of his adult life and he must now learn to live in a new world. As her illness deepened, he became a full time caregiver, until the rhythms of her treatments and the alleviation of her pain shaped almost every moment of his life, night and day.

For some among my nieces and nephews, my mother’s death marks their first real encounter with life’s greatest mystery. Someone they loved has been taken away; they now begin the transformative engagement with the knowledge of death that both marks human beings off from the animal kingdom and forces us onto the spiritual journeys that will define and shape our lives.

True. My grandparent’s generation is gone: my parents generation is fading, and time with them is precious. I’m taking some time during the school holidays to visit them. Mum and Dad have made it through 56 years: may death not part them.

For death awaits us all. But death is not the end. We will then meet our eternal fate: life eternal or death unending.