(J.S Bach Prelude in C-Major from
Bagdad Cafe soundtrack)
Hello from the past, and thank you for
being here right now in the present. Thank you for bearing witness
to my passing, and to hearing these final few words I wish to let go
out into the world.
I am aware that I do not wish to shape
your memory of me by what I say here and now. You will remember me
the way you want and need to. And I love that. So this short speech
today is not really about me.
As I sit here, in the past, writing
this, I am imagining the future; this present of yours, and what I am
feeling is immense gratitude.
Really, I just want to thank you.
I would like to think I made my love
for you well-felt enough when I lived, but of course we never can, as
humans, ever love enough to satisfy ourselves. Such is our
desire for love, for each other, for the amazing sense of oneness we
share as people, that I spent most of my entire life
trying to have others see my love. Perhaps, that I might see it in
myself. Where I was remiss in seeming to love you, I am sorry;
it was not for lack of love, just a flaw in me.
But like I said, this is not about me.
In life I had the immense good fortune
to have loved and to have been loved, and eventually to have let
myself feel that love properly, truly, deeply, too. This; despite my
own best efforts at sabotaging my own happiness. You, my family of
man, have constantly embraced me. You have allowed me to feel the
love of the universe through you. You have taught me, finally, one of
the Great Life Lessons it seems I most needed to learn: to
trust. Through you I have learned to have
faith, purely, not in any single or particular thing,
but to allow the feeling of faith to be real. In the end I did get
what those spiritual masters and prophets who have gone before have
said on the subject of faith and belief, and in the end, it was you
through whom I awakened to it. Nature, Godhead if you will, spoke to
me in great part through you. This is true of my closest companions
and the most random strangers.
What happened? How did I come to feel
so changed and loved when at times in life it seemed so much
suffering and pain was stacked against me? When the world around in
itself could seem so torn and broken and wretched with needless
agonies and destruction?
Well, I don't know.
But it's something to do with nature,
and spirit. You see, I say that all this love has come through you,
and this is true, but deeper still, I feel this love as that of the
love of all creation, the pure light of some divine reality. The
same stuff you get from properly just sitting and being with a tree,
or a cow, or whatever. The what is unimportant. The just
being is the thing, the place at the edge where it all happens.
For what it's worth, I came to see it more and more around me, and as
my days faded the light I saw, the glimmer of man slowly but
inexorably returning to Nature, reconciling with itself, grew greater
and clearer. I don't think it was just me. I think we really are
changing.
I am pretty sure I did not die perfect.
But I am even surer that I died pretty damn well, and for the
opportunity, the great good fortune to do that; the enormous luxury
of time to truly suffer and deeply experience the lessons my
oh-so-slow mind insisted on trying to grasp and speak out loud, I am
thankful. For letting go and going past that, I am more thankful
still. To have found release, to have glimpsed the Oneness of death
and life, at least in some small way.
It might be fair to say that today your
life has more death in it than the average day.
Let us then celebrate the gifts of
life, but also those that death brings us; closure, relief, renewal.
Letting go. The cleansing power of grief to shift our energies, to
stretch us and our ability to love and grow. But let us never forget
to equally honour the darkness, the hurt, the pain. These things are
OK. Really, I promise.
That death and
disruption strike at every hour, yet we continue to behave as though
we were immortal; this is the greatest mystery.
I shall not seek to ask your blessing,
or that you remember me well, or even at all. I do not
seek to have the last word, and given my form in life it's a fair cop
that so many of you would at least inwardly chuckle at that' but
seriously, I trust you to let me go the best way you know how, in the
way that makes it feel rightest - that is, the most right
- for you. Because learning to trust in life has given me a great
faith in what is happening, or has happened, since writing this and
in dying.
How can we decide to
trust life and not trust its equal and necessary partner, death?
I am not going to ask you not to
grieve, I do not want to try and deny you the needs of your pain, as
can be such a fashionable thought these days, to quarantine all the
'negative' thoughts and feelings and – in the case of death –
celebrate the good things only. Let us celebrate the grief and the
growth from pain, as well as the joy.
But let's DO celebrate,
for my life has been simply the most fabulous fucking thing
ever.
I could write a list. It would be
really, really long. But I shan't, for the time of counting
blessings is past now too. The blessings are in totality; alongside
my old self, all become one.
Music has been the
closest thing in my life to religion.
Earlier you heard a scant two minutes
of a simple piece of Bach, played by a young amateur actor, on a
nearly clapped-out old upright piano, that touches for me every
single aspect of human experience worth having. It is a magick. One
single note at a time, the entirety of life and all eternity held up
to the light and exultant. So if you wish to know what I think about
the afterlife, or what is here for me now, beyond death, listen to
music. Music will tell you. Art is here for us that we may have some
way of understanding that which logic can never touch.
There is so much I could say to and of
each and every one of you, but that time is gone now too. Still,
there are those to whom I wish to dedicate a special place in the
heart of this day.
The first, my mother Betty, father
Michael, and sister Bronnwyn, for bringing me into being and
shepherding me through the first years of my life. And the last, my
partner, comrade, lover and friend, Meeta. For all
that we have done and shared and been. And for being here to help me
go in the way that you have. There are not words for how grateful I
am to you Meeta, for there is no edge to my thankfulness and love.
It's OK though, because I know that you know that I know what had to
be known in the end. We knew.
Posterity, it turns out, isn't
something I ended up being overly concerned about. It feels to me
now like I did what I wanted and needed to do in life. And that, the
sense held deep in my very marrow that I went where I needed to go,
faced the challenges and learned from the failures and hurts as much
as from the joys and cheers, is the blessing I wish for everyone on
earth.
I wish that you find a place of true
contentment, a safe and sacred space inside, a connected space that
holds you snug in the embrace of nature and light, yet a space that
carries always the memory that death is just … right … here. All
the time. That is the way for us to heal; to heal ourselves, each
other, and most vitally, our planet. To heal our Nature. However
you do that, as long as it's real.
Goodbye then.
Please go deeply into your day today,
whatever that means and however that goes for you right now. Look
around, look at the person either side of you for a moment and
remember their faces, with love. Before you take your leave today
and go back into your own private day of life, remember to take the
moment to feel the love of everyone here, and everyone touched by
knowing you, or even just meeting you for the very first time.
Remember I loved you, and knew well of your love for me. Remember we
are all the same. We are all the same thing. Even as I am dead and
gone now, we are still one with matter and energy, in entropy, and in
the light that shines through us.
Thank you not just for your love in my
life, but for your love in letting me – helping me – to go.
I will leave you with one more piece of
music, which I hope you will like. It is I guess a little parable
about the power of love and togetherness; to grow we humans well, as
a part of nature, accepting all that comes, beyond judgement.
It is called “One Voice,” performed
by the Wailin' Jennies.
This is the sound of one voice
One spirit, one voice
The sound of one who makes a choice
This is the sound of one voice
This is the sound of voices two
The sound of me singing with you
Helping each other to make it through
This is the sound of voices two
This is the sound of voices three
Singing together in harmony
Surrendering to the mystery
This is the sound of voices three
This is the sound of all of us
Singing with love and the will to trust
Leave the rest behind it will turn to dust
This is the sound of all of us
This is the sound of one voice
One people, one voice
A song for every one of us
This is the sound of one voice
This is the sound of one voice
(from the album "40 Days")
