“I am Cedric’s daughter”

So, who am I now? I have been so many versions of myself but this is a self description I have not used in years.

I have just visited my 95 year old aunt, probably for the last time. When I entered her care home room, it was clear that she either couldn’t see me or she didn’t recognise me.

Of course I quickly said ‘it’s Sheila’ but the confusion remained.

So then I reached for the only description of myself which would help her place me, “I’m Cedric’s daughter” her face relaxed and she knew at once who I was.

I spent a couple of hours with her, just quietly talking to her about how all this would soon pass, and how she would soon sleep and when she woke there would be no more pain.

Driving home, I reflected on those first words ‘I am Cedric’s daughter’, how long has it been since I introduced myself in that way. Such a very, very, long time. My father passed away when I was just 26 and now I’m 64. (Btw, the C in Cedric is said as a K, even if you only reading this in your head, it matters to me that his name is said the way it always was).

But not surprisingly the occasions on which I reference him have become fewer and fewer.

And when my aunt finally passes there will be no one to whom it would make any sense if I were to introduce myself as ‘Cedric’s daughter’. Which really underlines powerfully the way that all of our identities are bound up with one another. We are who we are because of who we are connected to. We define ourselves in terms of our key relationships.

Although my aunt has now lived so very many years without her brother (my father) they were very close siblings from a sibling group of seven of which she is the last one alive.

She was two years younger than Cedric and at the onset of the second world war the two of them were sent together back to the UK from India (‘for safekeeping’) but what this meant was many years of staying in boarding schools and children’s home and many years of not seeing their parents.

I cannot even begin to grasp the impact of these circumstances but not surprisingly they remained close and when my father died suddenly at just 58, my aunt was devastated.

So to her, and perhaps only to her now, I am still ‘Cedric’s daughter’ not David’s wife, not my children’s mother, not the grandmother to my grandchildren.

My connection with to my aunt returns me to my primary identity: who I am in relation to those who had brought me into this world.

This reflection has made me realise that in the end all the ways we describe ourselves are fleeting. Yet it also reminds me that being ‘a loved child of my father’ is my ultimate identity – the one that will never pass away.

‘See how very much the Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are!’ 1John 3:1

‘ Even before he had made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his family‘ Ephesians 1:5