On the 16th July twenty-three years ago, today, I received a knock on the door. It was one of those irritating moments as I was unpacking having just been posted to Germany, our furniture and boxes having only arrived the day before. We were in total chaos!

We were sleeping on mattresses’ on the floor, the house was crammed with half opened boxes spilling out into a sea of stuff. Nothing could be found anywhere, and now this! A knock on the door. As the newly appointed chaplain to the 1st Battalion of the Green Howards, I was struggling to settle into my new position, my new quarter and now there was this unwelcome call.

I opened it to find a very nervous soldier, who was clearly embarrassed, and my heart sank as I recognised the newly familiar face of our Families Officer. Clearly there was some family crisis elsewhere that needed my help.

‘Padre, I am sorry to say,’ he stuttered, ‘your mother has been involved in a car accident!’

The rest of that day is as blur of dim cluttered memories. Getting on my knees and telling my eight and six-year sons the news that their nanny was dead. Ross replying with wisdom beyond his years: ‘Daddy, it will never be the same again!”

Throwing clothes into a suitcase suppressing the OCD screaming in my head to do it properly! Arriving at Hanover airport to discover an RAF VC 10 had been delayed for me on the airfield and walking down the aisle with every face on me, the poor Compassionate Case. And then the flight, soaring above those dark water laden clouds over Germany into glorious sunshine – intruding into the darkness and confusion of my mind. Wanting to enjoy this sun warming my face – but troubled at such indulgence at a time like this!

The helicopter waiting for me as I descended the steps at RAF Brize Norton and the flight across the beautiful English countryside the sole passenger of a Westland Lynx, talking to the crew and landing on the helipad at Bury St Edmunds general hospital to be greeted by my father and brother.

Saying goodbye to mum, as she lay still not yet cold, with her head bandaged to conceal its brokenness.

This was not my mother! This is not her, so vibrant, so purposeful, dominating her environment, making her will felt and acquiesced. The lioness, protective of and controlling her pride, always active, full of life and energy, dominating and loving, caring and scaring by her passion for life and faith. This broken doll, impersonating her, but without the light, its eyes did not burn with that of ‘mum’! It was absent, silent, staring but not seeing.

The hugs with dad and my siblings, the tears, laughter, pain and sheer mess of loss hit us at once and over months, overwhelming and yet sneaking up when you least expected it; roaring in your ears, yet niggling at your toes. Relentless, yet not always so intense nor all consuming. It was unexpected, unfair, unwanted and devastating, and for my father ended thirty-six years of happy marriage, and yet on Sunday we celebrated her life. We sang hymns to the glory of God, and I joked with the church that Jesus had taken her early so she could advise him with the decoration of her mansion in heaven! Those who knew her, laughed deeply. But what sustained us all was not this escape into humour, or the comfort of family it was the deep conviction that this passionate women was one of faith, and since her teens had embraced and followed a carpenter from Nazareth; who the world had tried to silence but had somehow overcome the tune of death by cutting through it with a new song of resurrection!

Mum was gone! I had stood over that waxen doll that claimed to be her, and held its limp hand kissing its cool cheek. But Valerie Maynard was not in that broken shell, she was somewhere else, beyond me and mine, but only for a time. Not forever, for she had shown me a way, a man, a faith, a purpose and a hope. Not blind, for this faith had been tested, as was being tested that day and would further be tested by death, pain and war, but He was there always.

Hard to describe, or prove, but the certainty and conviction that comes from the practise and commitment to a person had shown me that He could be trusted. Even now twenty-three years after losing my mother in that collision on the A134.

We mourn but we also look forward to that day when we shall all meet physically and spiritually in that new place. Cloud Cuckoo Land for the doubters and the cynics yet for those who make the effort to get to know Him, a place more certain than this broken world.

We mourn, but not without hope!

The Revd Cole Maynard,
Senior Minister, Colchester Baptist Church.