Dee and me and today

And now the cards. Beautiful cards to mark the death of a beautiful lady. So very many, so very moving their inscriptions both printed and personal. Thank you, senders, for making me proud, for making me stop (for now) with all that formulaic post death minutae and for the heat and the moist behind my eyes as I write this.

Today the funeral. I'll post out my eulogy afterwards. This is the reverse on the order of service ...



For Delia(a valediction)
So then this is the way it has to be. To live  in sorrow waving my farewell; and now what’s left  when nothing’s any more to say, to take, to give?  
But true it is that, as it’s time to say goodbye,  to you, dear Dee, I die myself a little; yes -  (and ‘though in dry eyed silence yet a man may cry.) 
I care so little for the months and years ahead,  so harsh without your tender glance, your love, and mine  for still we are in body and in spirit wed.
Oh, we have journeyed far together, side by side  o’er Scotland’s banks and braes and oceans wild and wide  and through the sunlit Hampshire woods with you my guide.
So many other joys we shared, and through the eyesof children, ours and theirs, who grow up straight and strong to walk this vale of sighs and say their own goodbyes.
Of late life’s urgent over-pace has been down-slowedthen pain curtailed at last at nature’s kindly hand,  and nothing more’s to want and nothing more is owed.
I see you, Dee, within the stars, the sky, the sea;and I believe that we shall surely meet once moreto walk again together through that fair country.
Bryan Islip