Ashes

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Today all we met and carefully poured the dry white dead ashes of my mother into a hole in the graveyard of the home church​

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We shovelled and stamped down the earth near the arched church door

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Somewhere in the family photos there is an old black and white photograph of her as a beautiful young woman standing in the same church doorway smiling and beaming in anticipation of a future life with a handsome young man who today is now bent and old

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He wiped away a tear and walked away alone except for us, his children who will look after him and perhaps eventually, follow him into that  same old churchyard ground