More to mystery of life than we see with earthly eyes

By chance, it falls to me to submit this column on the fifth anniversary of the death of our beautiful daughter, Carrie.

I’d like to share with you an experience around her dying which has helped me; perhaps it will help someone else.

Carrie was a healthy, cheeky kid when the unthinkable happened for her and for us all; that medical investigation that ultimately led to the diagnosis phone call that was to change everything.

Three years later, her last few days were the ones where the time stretches exhaustingly through the intense trauma, and yet rapidly fly through your fingers.

She was beautiful, young and fit; yet broken, suffering and incredibly tired.

I’d like to say it was a blissfully peaceful drift away, but it just wasn’t.

She was too young and otherwise healthy for her body to shut down gently.

So, when she left us, it was not a sleepy drift-away; it was her toughest journey.

As she lay there, during her final days, this most strange but beautiful smell surrounded her.

It was something like fresh new wood – deep, heady and pretty mysterious.

We inhaled it, as we cuddled her, and couldn’t figure out what it was.

It was maybe three weeks later, heart-broken and faking that I was doing OK, I was back at St Mary’s, giving the lead to service as I had a thousand times before.

Suddenly that same smell reappeared and engulfed me.

Like a Spring morning when the fragrance of nature surrounds you. The fresh-wood smell was so powerful, I looked around to see if other people were noticing it.

They smiled back at me… Tentatively (still reading aloud on autopilot) I called out to her in my heart.

Then, suddenly, she was there – standing not two metres away from me.

The same person, and yet completely transformed; radiant. The suffering and disfigurement of the steroids was gone; as were the expression of pain and indescribable fatigue (how she’d been when we said our goodbyes).

She was absolutely complete, whole and – here’s the thing – smiling and laughing.

Meanwhile; still reading aloud – keeping the service going; in my heart – I asked if she was OK?

Somehow she showed me that she certainly was; that she was safe and that the waiting wasn’t going to be a problem.

And then, I could see that she was leaving. With everything I had, I reached out to her to stay. But she was gone; the fragrance lifted, the mundane was restored, and I turned the page on the leaflet and carried on with the service.

The smell returned once more only – on the day that we took her Kawe Mate to Parihaka. Space had incredibly graciously been made to receive her there.

There, it returned and lingered about us, as we walked, heads bowed, with the little group, towards the paepae.

Why have I shared this?

Two reasons. One : As a minister, I know the privilege of spending time with someone after a loss.

Often, people will share an experience of encounter with their loved one after their passing; shyly and self-consciously – and with the subtext that they maybe imagined the whole thing.

I have heard enough such stories to be confident that there’s something in it beyond extravagant hope – there is a reality, and these experiences are a gift to us that we do not need to unpiece or over think; but to lock away safely and draw upon.

My own experience could no more or less be discounted than getting up this morning and making a coffee; it happened.

And that is my second reason for this story. I don’t know why I was blessed with this experience, but I know others have been too, and it’s clear to me that it was to be shared.

There is more to the mystery of this life than that which we see with our earthly eyes, and we can never pretend to have all the answers. They will come, in time.

And, although something like this seems to happen for many; for those who wait on that reassurance, it is my heartfelt hope that you will draw encouragement from this: my surety that your loved one is safe, complete, free from physical limitations and suffering... and is waiting – not impatiently – for your work to be done and for the journey that you have to reach its home.