Last night our friend Heather Baxter came into my mind. Heather has been ill for some time, battling cancer for even longer. For some reason I was acutely aware of her and deeply concerned. This morning I woke up and the first email to arrive was from Heather's husband Martin telling me that Heather had said her goodbyes and left us for the next life.
The Stockies are heartbroken. Back in 2005 Martin and Heather were like our "dorm parents" when we did a sabbatical at Regent College, Vancouver. Oh they were so much younger but wiser to the Canadian ways and so caring of all of us. Caitlin and Jasmine were young and they loved the Baxters. Heather was a gem. Beautiful inside and out. She was a gentle light of Jesus. She helped give our family the best three months of our lives! We are ever grateful...
... and therefore, this morning, heartbroken. Heather is too young to have left Martin and her two young daughters. The fallen world can be horribly cruel. Even our wonderful hope of Heather "falling into the loving arms of our Lord and Saviour", as Martin described her passing, doesn't erase the sense of sadness for us and empty void for Martin and his girls.
I do my wrestling in rhyme. I had begun this poem a few weeks ago when I saw a rainbow over Harryville, where I grew up. I was reading Marie Monville's book One Light Still Shines at the time. It is about how faith saw her through, after her husband became the Amish School House Shooter in 2006. The title of her book and something one of her children said about God making the bad a little less bad gets a line too.
So, I finished it, or at least this draft of it, today fondly remembering Heather and thinking of Martin and the girls. This goes out as a tough prayer for you all.
There’s a rainbow over The Skerries
Like a promise from long ago
Clouds of black and gray a-swirl
Like the sky just doesn’t know
The weather moves unpredictable
How dangerously the wind blows
There’s a rainbow over The Skerries
Like a promise from long ago
When the pillar of familiar
Gives way beneath your lean
You are paying the heart-robbed cost
Of everything that love means
Your heart’s been lacerated
By the exploding force of sad
Believe one light still shines
To make the bad a little less bad
There’s a rainbow over The Skerries
Like a whisper from on high
Comfort comfort my people
When you hear them cry
Bereft of the final goodnight kiss
The empty side of the bed sighs
There’s a rainbow over The Skerries
Like a whisper from on high.