I’m only sorry that I did not get to know May until the last, and tenth, decade of her life was underway. By all accounts, she was a woman with many talents and interests and with many friends from across the various communities in whose lives she shared. She was known to be a highly intelligent lady but even more importantly she was known as a woman of deep faith in God. It was her faith which grounded everything else in her life. I myself saw it in action in the fervent devotion with which she received the sacraments of the Church. Hers was a faith both instinctive and intelligent. It was the broader horizon of her outlook on life and the measuring stick of what she heard, said and did.

It is no surprise that such faith took root in her in the Highlands, where she was brought up in a croft near Fort William. Known officially as Margaret Ellen, May was the middle of three sisters. Leticia, her older sister, emigrated to Canada in the 1940’s, and Sally, her younger sister, like May herself, stayed in Scotland. Sadly, both sisters predeceased May. May was well known in Fort William. She was the registrar for the district of Kilmalie, a position she loved for many years before meeting Bill Holland, a Londoner, whom she married in the late 60s. They then bought and ran a guesthouse in Moffat, Dumfriesshire. Although May was not blessed with any children of her own, she was always very close to her three nieces May, Donella, and Letty. And, of course, there was her beautiful black poodle Jackie which was more than a little spoilt.

May and Bill retired in the late 80s and moved to Ayrshire to be closer to May’s sister Sally. Bill passed away shortly thereafter. But May continued to be active in the Largs community, volunteering at the Benedictine monastery, enjoying her weekly bridge and bingo outings, community coffee mornings, and social lunches. She had many friends in Largs and will be sorely missed by them all.

I recall once asking an elderly aunt of mine how she was feeling as she got older. She answered, “I’m in the departure lounge.” On a couple of occasions, when I was called out to give May the last rites, I thought that she was surely ready for boarding! But, no, she lived on to see more than another day in the departure lounge. As one parishioner quipped, “May has had more comebacks than Frank Sinatra!” I am sure May herself, as her tenth decade progressed, wondered occasionally why she was still here, why she was still in the waiting room. These things are not ours to know. They are God’s prerogative and, as May would have been the first to recognize, God will have had a purpose for blessing us with her presence for so long. The prophet Isaiah gives us a hint of God’s purpose when he says, “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”

God keeps us waiting to intensify the gladness and joy we will experience when He does come and take us to Himself in salvation. Our entire life is like Advent, a time to increase in our longing for the day when we will see God face to face. Today, though, we so often get things round the wrong way. We long for this life as if it were its own fulfilment, as if Advent had no expectation of Christmas, and we look on death as the cruel interruption of the good things we enjoy on earth. Someone like May would never make such a mistake. While rightly enjoying the good things which came her way and enduring the sufferings which also were part of her life, her whole focus was on the Lord who was coming to save her. She knew the Lord to be her Good Shepherd, guiding her on the right path, true to His Name, and leading her without fear through the valley of the shadow of death en route to the His own house where she will dwell for length of days unending.

This life is not our invention or discovery. Our time is not some raw material we can play with as we please. It is the opportunity for grace, for preparing for God. We discover ourselves to be alive only gradually. As we grow in awareness, the Lord presents us with the abundance of His gifts of both nature and grace, hoping that we will receive them with joy and wonder. He wants our eyes to open and see that He Himself is deserving of our love, our faith and our hope more than anything or anyone He has created. Our life is sheer gift and the truest and most authentic human response to it is joyful gratitude. The reality of evil often distorts and ruins the gift, but the Giver of all good gifts, if we trust in Him, will deliver us from that evil. That is why Christ came: by his Cross to destroy sin and to snatch from the hands of Satan the keys of death. Our Advent of life now ends, not in Christmas, but before the throne of God, in the company of all who now dwell in the Father’s house, not least Christ Himself.

Perhaps like Thomas, we still want to ask the question, “how can we know the way?” to where Christ is. How can we get out of the maze of life today with its seductions and illusions, with its fleeting experiences and frenetic activity? Christ’s answer to us will be the same: “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life.” We will never find Christ at the end of our lives if we don’t stop and take stock of the truth that He is present here and now. If we just let one day run into the next and never slow down and sit down to call upon Him in the depths of our own hearts, the madness of the maze of life will only get madder and death will overtake us unprepared. We need to gain some of that wisdom of the departure lounge before we come to it: to sit and wait for the Lord, to abide His coming, to long for His gentle and overwhelming presence and love. To do this in simple and frequent prayer will dispel the madness of the maze and return godly control to our lives, our loves and our yearnings. It will prepare us for death, yes, but more importantly, it will prepare us for eternal life. Prayer prepares us for eternity precisely because it prepares us for death.

May enjoyed her puzzles and, with her sharp intelligence, quickly solved many of them. But the puzzle she most solved was the puzzle of life and of life’s purpose. In the depth of her faith, she knew that the answer to all of the clues in the key questions of life and death is simply Christ Jesus our Lord.

So, let us not let our hearts be troubled or afraid for May. She believed in God and in His Son, Jesus Christ and she knew He was preparing a place for her. He has now come at length and taken her to Himself, and it is our fervent prayer that she is now where He is. The best way to honour her memory is to honour and imitate her example of a true, deep and loving faith in Him.