Blessings Done and Missed

In the far distant past now, Peter the former manager of Widelake House care home not far away used to like me (or the Roman Catholic parish priest) to come and bless the house before he went on holiday. He used to claim that it made the place calmer and had a completely unsubstantiated suspicion that the place was built on an Anglo-Saxon burial ground which I think may have arisen from the tall tales told by a local author with a penchant for turning his surroundings into an alternate reality. But I have never been asked to do the same at Southmere, the other care home where people I know from Swanvale Halt mostly tend to go. However the manager of Southmere did ask me to call by and perform this ceremony a couple of weeks ago, and it was my great privilege to oblige. Unlike Peter, Lizzie at Southmere didn't require me to enter every bedroom except where there was a danger the occupant might actually throw something at us in wrath. Instead, from the full-scale rite of house blessing, I used only the prayers at the entrance, for a living room in the main lounge, and the kitchen, plus some general topping-and-tailing. I thought I probably rushed it a little out of a sense of self-consciousness, but they were all very appreciative. 

Members of the congregation do frequently finish their days in Southmere and Widelake, and for yesterday's ritual we were accompanied by Susan and Sheila. Sheila is a relatively recent arrival, as is her husband who came here and was almost at once taken to hospital, before returning in a very shaky state. I'd been in to see Sheila last Monday but Dermot had been asleep, and, as his son told me in the evening, at almost the same time as I was marking Southmere's door lintel with oil and spraying holy water around, Dermot had been slipping out of this earthly realm. It would have been better had I gone to say a prayer for him, but (not for the first time) I am left hoping that they work in retrospect.