S is for SILENCE

I'd finished cutting the grass, cleaned the lawnmower and packed it away, wishfully hoping that it could now hibernate until spring but knowing that it would probably appear a few times before Santa. After all, it is only early October! The key had only turned in the shed door where it sleeps, I'd turned around to wander back home, but stopped, momentarily, to stroke my mum's two little Jack Russell terriers. And that's when the silence hit me. It was deafening. I knew I had to take a moment and breathe it in so I rested for a while on the white summer seat outside the place that I had called home for so many years. I think Snoopy and Patch sensed it too, for they both came over and lay at my feet as together we remembered. My sister still occupies the house but it was early afternoon and since she hadn't returned from work, the place looked strangely like a step back in time - except for the silence. It has been like that since February a year and a half ago, when mum joined dad on her final journey, but for some reason 'this moment in time' in its strangely unexpected way brought home the brevity of life and the constantly changing circumstances we all experience.



In the silence, I could remember dad whitewashing the walls of the sheds, peering out of the kitchen window, slumped in an armchair at the back door while reading the morning paper, with only an old straw hat protecting his long since receded hairline from the noonday sun. In the silence, I could see mum at every window, watching as I mowed the lawns, weeding in her precious garden, sitting beside dad with a young Snoopy on her lap. In the silence I could hear our neighbour Fred's tractor struggle up the hill on his weekly visit, John stopping in the yard for a chinwag on his way to the orchard, Howard parking his lorry outside the gates and ambling around the corner with the local news and Kenny's scooter doing three full circuits of the yard and sometimes leaving but usually pulling up for a cup of tea. In the silence I could hear a lorry load of bales arrive from many miles away and unloaded in the hayshed, Billy freewheeling into the yard in his mini van, my two young sons pedal over the concrete on their tricycles and an apple sprayer being filled from the water tap beside the garage. In the silence, I remember the sound of the milkman, the breadman, the lemonade man, the coalman and the grocery man.



But none of them come now, because the reason for their visits has gone. And the world is a quieter place. But in the silence I remember that it had already become quieter when we had gone and neither the noise of the television, the chat of the occasional visitor nor the sound of farmers working in the fields could hide the silence that dominated their world when the family has left the nest. I know, because I've been there.



It came and then it was gone, just as quickly. But I hadn't forgotten the silence that stopped me that afternoon. As the evening sun began to fall, a small round glow settled on one of the corrugated roofs and as I reasoned how this could be, with the fast fading sun on the wrong side of the building, already engulfed in shadow, I couldn't find an answer, but in the silence I had realised that I didn't have to find one, just like I don't have to know the reason why God lets some things happen that I can't explain. It's all about faith isn't it. Faith in a God who knows and sees all and whom we can still praise in the silence. As Job said, 'My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.' Thank God for the silence. It opens your eyes.