Restful

About five years ago I was on a week long residential retreat doing family constellations work with Jill Purce.

In this work you recount your family's story making sure to include any ancestors who have been excluded or dis-honoured, or who left or died early. It's powerful work, my own family was an avalanche of loss and trauma on both parents' lines. As each person's story unfolds members of the group are asked to take take up appropriate positions to represent each family member.

My father and his sole remaining brother had recently died and many members of the the family who had predeceased them had not been fully mourned or honoured. Various group members were asked to lie in a row to represent my paternal grandparents and all their dead children. One chap blanched and looked thoroughly shaken as he took up his position.

Later he told us that his family had lived all over the world as his father was an oil executive. When his parents divorced his mother chose to settle in this small town in the middle of nowhere. She subsequently committed suicide here, hence his reluctance to assume the role of a dead person in this precise locale! Too close for comfort.

He had scattered her ashes in this beautiful spot. This whole story was such an extraordinary coincidence that I feel bound to go and visit her resting place whenever I'm here. So I have spent the afternoon in the land of the soul, very restful it was too.