Learn from someone you love

There was a memorial service for my sister yesterday. It was very emotional, and very beautiful. Only slightly marred by the torrential downpour that comes with the unsettling shift into a British Autumn, and let me tell you, in case you don't already know this, that there are plenty of unfortunate places to be caught in a thunderstorm and downpour, but none quite so thankless, bleak or depressing than a cemetery. Five minutes in my feet were soaked, my hands were freezing, and my obligatory hat drooped miserably at the edges. Still, the service was a meaningful one, one my sister would have been gratified to have heard, a set of reflections that paid true tribute to her wonderfulness. Something that was said during the service set me thinking. A common strain of thought in my faith, and one which was repeated at the service, was that in trying to come to terms with the death of someone you love, one of the best ways forward is to replicate their virtues as a legacy of their life. What were my sister's virtues? She was extraordinarily generous and kind. At the service there were many people I didn't recognise. One, a woman in a wheelchair, wheeled over to me to say hello. She looked to be in her early seventies, more than 20 years older than my sister. I asked how she knew her. She said she was in the next bed in the hospital when my sister had had her mastectomy. My sister, even in recovery, had taken an active interest in her neighbour, and after they left hospital they stayed in touch and became very close. I was very touched by this story. In hospital wards, and I have spent time in a few, generally the last thing on most people's list of priorities is to make friends with your neighbours. My top priority is to get the hell out as soon as I decently can, and avoid catching MRSA comes a close second. In any case I am usually so drug addled I am too moody to communicate with my own family, never mind total strangers who are twenty years older. Not my sister. She had had a breast removed in a desperate treatment regime designed, ultimately, to claw back two years of life. And she still managed to take an interest in the people around her, even in her pain. I am sure I can learn from this, though I am also sure it will creep out my fellow commuters if I start taking an interest in their lives on the 0600 to Charing Cross. At the same time, my sister was an accomplished baker of occasion cakes, because she was arty and creative and loved making something  beautiful to celebrate a milestone in somebody's life. Well. I think I have the baking thing sewn up. And, like my sister, I love to bake a cake for others. I am rubbish at piping icing, my line tends to be in a damn fine chcoolate tart for someone who is sad or recovering from an illness or just needs some TLC. But it gives me extra pleasure to bake something with my sister in my mind.  I mull over this as I put together a massive chocolate pudding. It is about recalling elements of my sister's special gifts that form part of my healing journey, not about replicating them completely. At least, I hope not. She used to knock out four tier cakes shaped like computers and guitars. If I turn out a guitar shaped cake it's because the neighbour's dog has chewed the sides.