Grace Adeyemi

Sat with a friend in a hospital waiting room today, both of us too tired for words. So I borrowed Julian's: all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. Said it under my breath until I half believed it.

Evensong tonight, and the Nunc Dimittis: 'Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.' I've sung it a hundred times. Tonight was the first time I thought of Mum while singing it and still made it to the end. Just.

The choir tune that won't leave

Centering prayer is meant to be simple. Twenty minutes, one sacred word, and when you notice you've drifted into thoughts, you return ever so gently to the word. Thoughts are boats going down a river; you don't have to climb aboard. This week every single boat has been the alto line of the Advent anthem we're rehearsing. Twenty minutes, roughly forty returns, and I could sing you bars 12 to 30 in my sleep. Julian of Norwich would tell me this is fine. All shall be well, and all manner of descant shall be well. I return to the word. The altos return to bar 12. We carry on.

Writing the names for All Souls

Every October our parish leaves a book at the back of the church for All Souls. You write the names of the people you've lost, and on the evening of the 2nd they're read aloud at the requiem, one by one, while a candle burns on the altar. Today I wrote my mother's name for the fifth year. My handwriting has got steadier each time. This year I added my old choir director, who taught me to breathe from the belly and never, ever to go flat on a descant. There's something about seeing her name on a page with a hundred others, in a hundred different hands. Grief is so private, and then for one evening it isn't.