Reading Revelation at Cottingley Crem
- Jon Swales
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
It was spring.
The blossom tree stood,
quiet,
its branches soft with new life.
Bluebells dotted the ground,
fragile,
waiting
for something to unfold.
About thirty of us gathered,
some sharing stories,
passing cigarettes
between trembling fingers,
the kind of stories that only come
when the world feels
too heavy to hold.
Before the car arrived,
I saw him—
a relative,
still cuffed,
guards at his side,
looking down at the ground.
He wasn’t free,
but he was here.
For you.
The undertakers entered,
moving quietly,
the coffin passed,
simple,
dignified.
And the priest spoke,
his voice steady
with a hint of sadness,
“I am the resurrection and the life.
Those who believe in me,
even though they die,
will live,
and everyone who lives
and believes in me
will never die.”
I held onto those words,
fragile but there,
even if I didn’t yet
believe them fully.
We sat in silence,
the priest reading from Revelation:
“Then I saw a new heaven
and a new earth…”
The words slipped
into the
cracks of our grief,
“God will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more…”
The photo next to coffin
caught my eye—
a picture from Filey beach,
you,
smiling,
alive,
a good day out,
before everything changed,
before the silence.
I’ll try to remember your name,
but there are so many
who die so young,
each life slipping away
before it had a chance to stretch into tomorrow.
And yet,
somehow,
this moment—
this memory of you—
feels more
real at this moment
than all the rest.
The priest closed the book,
and we sat,
holding the weight of the words.
Outside,
birds sang,
the bluebells
trembled in the breeze,
and the blossom tree
stood,
still.
One by one,
we filed out,
each of us carrying a part of you.
Some of us bowed,
some stunned,
others sobbing.
And I wondered,
whether maybe,
just maybe,
those words
from the
old book were
true,
not now,
but somewhere
in the
future
where
grief
meets
hope.
__
Rev’d Jon Swales, 2025
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