Arohanuinui ( big, big love)

I could think of no other way to express the strange churning of emotion in my chest than to write a poem - hence my previous posting.

I have been warmed and humbled by so much human love and goodness as my Mum was dying and after her death, not least by Mum's Catholic family. Fr Damian won all my siblings hearts, and mine, with his down to earth humanity and his spirituality.

Sister Mary Snelgar, Maxine and all you other Catholic ladies - in your faithfulness to mum you mirrored the faithfulness of God Himself. Thank you Paul for your help and your organ playing.

Thank you Bruce McGregor for your CD copy of Vidor's Toccata.

And there were others - The Dominican Brothers, Leone, Tony and Connie, Debs and little Isaiah, (thes came a long way) Beth's D.O.C. and Pete's PolyTech colleages, Anne and Mike Godfrey, Ruth and David Wright, Ray and Sue Blomquist, Hazel and Christine Elliott, John, Jodi and Joan, and so many others who came by with their tears, their arohanuinui, and not forgetting food and flowers and cards. If I've left any on off, my sincere apologies.

Thanks to my family, Beth, Bob Rach, Baby Bro & Becky, my daughter Miriam, my boys Mike and Steve, all the almost countless nieces and nephews and cousins and other hangers-on. Thanks for being real and being yourselves.

And a special thanks to my beloved, my rock and heart of my own heart - Sue xxx.

Thanks to God for his strange new wine. It's a great vintage, but it makes me dangerous - mostly to myself.

As Bruce Cockburn sings:

Some of us live and some of us die;
someday God's going to tell us why.
Whatever happens this is not the end
We'll meet again at His Festival of Friends.

Now go and tell the ones you love that you love them. Tomorrow might be too late

I love you all