We hadn’t met in the longest time, my sister Katy and I. One day on the phone I told her I really wished we could meet up somewhere one more time before we die. Katy’s reply was not at all what I expected: ‘Me too. I will keep that in mind’. She wasn’t shocked in the slightest by my rather bizarre request. Strange that!!
How delighted I am now that we did meet up, totally unplanned, last May. She came walking towards me and I will never forget my joy and utter excitement in that moment. ‘Let’s have a selfie’, I said. ‘No photo please’, Katy replied.
Looking into her gentle kind eyes I uttered: ‘Katy, you are beautiful’. ‘Ok then’, she replied, relaxed and smiling and so our treasured selfie came to be. Thank God.
This morning I took ‘Divine Beauty’ by John o’ Donoghue from my bookcase and began reading page fifteen for no reason at all. My heart missed a beat....
‘When we say from our heart to someone: “You are beautiful”, it is more than a statement or platitude, it is a recognition and invocation of the dignity, grandeur and grace of their spirit’.
Katy and I got our longed-for meeting, I got to tell Katy she was beautiful, what more could I ask for! Thank you Father God from my deepest heart.
It is not possibly to be grateful and unhappy at the same time, I tell myself, as I wade knee deep through this dirt-track of searing grief and confusion.
May the Lord have mercy on your gentle soul my beautiful Katy.
‘To enter each day with a generous heart. To serve the call of courage and love until we see your beautiful face again in that land where there is no more separation. Where all tears will be wiped from our mind and where we will never lose you again’. (John O’Donohue /Benedictus)
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