27th January 2023

On his deathbed, the famous Citizen Kane whispered his final word: “Rosebud”. Strangely the word had not featured prominently in the story, but was full of pathos and poignancy, for it was the name of the sled given to him as a boy by his mother, presumably his last transaction with the innocence of youth and memory of maternal love. And then a glass ball, enclosing a miniature snow cottage, rolls from his lifeless hand, and smashes dramatically onto the floor.

I am tempted in this final blog to expire some similar word, but I am neither Orson Welles, nor vain enough to attach some clever device to the end of these small pieces of writing. For although during the last ten years, their subject matter has been drawn from the little incidents and accidents of my life, they are ultimately not about me, but about Someone whom I worship and love.

And so like the apostle Paul who said in one of his warm epistles, “I want to know Christ”, that too will be my final word; and therefore as I finish these blogs, no glass ball will roll dramatically to the floor to release some hitherto unmentioned childhood memory, nor will any nurse step forward with gravitas to cover the page with a funeral sheet, but I shall simply sign off and repeat those words said by that same apostle in that same epistle: “For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”

DM 27^th January 2023