A Sermon preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields on September 7, 2024 by Revd Dr Sam Wells
I want to tell you about a conversation that changed my life, and is a big reason why I join you at this service here today. Today would have been my mother’s 94th birthday: but it isn’t, because 40 years ago she died after a 15-year journey with cancer. I was 18 and bewildered; coming to terms with a terminal illness that goes on forever was one thing; but the transfer to grief and loss was another.
To make sense of it I reached out to my schoolfriends. But how could they understand? Yet one of them did. I got news about Steve. I hadn’t seen him for a few months, but I took courage and called. ‘I heard about your mum,’ I said. ‘Yeah,’ he grunted. ‘I wondered if you’d like to meet for a drink,’ I ventured. ‘Why not?’ he replied.
He told me how one morning his mother sent his dad off to work, gave him a hug, and then set off from her house in Bristol, my hometown. But that morning she didn’t go to work. Instead, she walked half a mile, laid down her briefcase, and jumped to her death from Clifton Suspension Bridge. He said the words matter-of-factly. I was in awe of how he held it together. I said, ‘I had no idea your mum was so ill.’ He said, ‘We didn’t talk about it.’ Then I told him my story. Of how my mother told me when I was five that she might not come home. And again when I was nine. And again when I was 15, though with more finality this time. And how still she did. Until eventually, painfully and agonisingly, it was over. He said, ‘I had no idea your mum was so ill.’ I said, ‘We didn’t talk about it.’
I reflected, ‘So, they’re two very different stories.’ And then Steve said words I would never forget; even today, 40 years on. ‘But don’t you see – they’re not different stories. Your mum died of a terminal illness. My mum did too. She lived on the edge, on the membrane between life and death. For years we wondered if we’d get a phone call. Finally we did. Your mum’s death and mine may look very different. But they both hovered for years between death and life – and finally gave in.’
I was awestruck. I still am. An 18-year-old boy with such clarity and insight. Somehow he brought the unspeakable into our lived reality, and made it something we could speak about with what I would now call the solidarity of grief. We found something with each other that night that gave us both meaning and truth.
And it’s that same something that created this service nine years ago. We come here with different stories. We each have unique pain and isolating grief. But in surprising ways we have the same story. A story of a powerlessness we all share. A story of an emptiness that feels like it will never resolve. Yet as we search for meaning and truth, we find ourselves here together, today. And we’re grateful for one another, because we’ve found something surprising, profound, and transformational.
It might not be faith; it might not yet be hope; it might not be meaning, truth or consolation. But what it is is the soil out of which some or all of those things may eventually grow. It’s a human experience chiselled in adversity and fostered in community. It’s what we call solidarity: the solidarity of grief.
