A Free, Fresh, Spirit has moved among us and lit each of our lives briefly. And as the light has reached us and touched us, we have seen a little more of the goodness that fills the frame of the life we know.

The light is fairy-like. Its luminosity envelops us. We can hear merriment like dance. It precedes us like the piper, assuring us there is hope, and loveliness. It offers us a way to follow. It leads us. That is why it goes on before us.

We should not feel sadness now, because she gave us the gift of rejoicing. A gift so rarely offered, yet it IS ours. We should not miss her.

She gave us light to follow. I’m sure, as we step forward in the brightness, our lives will reveal riches.

Of course, this is not to deny that we suffer grief now or that she suffered. But as a new infant suffers with its mother, there is no other passage to Love. Or to Life. Who has not suffered has not loved? Who has not loved, cannot be led into the brightness.

Throughout the history of humanity, these truths have been known. Wherefrom else come the great moral legends that guide and teach us through the generations. As I think in the wispy lovely girl whom I always associated with D’s strength and towering character, I think of that symbol of opposites that, by combination, renders the harmonious eternal whole.

But this is not to say V was simply a flower in her husband's garden. Just a few days ago, this flower sent D out to find a bicycle lock for me because I complained I could not leave my bike safely outside the supermarket. V was serenely adapted to the path that has been written for her. Even in her last days here, her concerns were to spare the very mortal frustrations of those she had to leave behind.

Do we want to go on worrying her like that?

An important person, who has taught me something about what life means, is Elizabeth Kubler Ross. As some will know, Ms Kubler Ross has been one of the great carers. She is a scientist, whose thoughts and words are filled with beauty and wisdom in equal measure. She has spent her life by the bedsides of the dying and the grieving. She has been with many in their moment of transition and she tells many stories about patients who wandered backwards and forwards across the line, in and out of life as it is clinically defined. She is not a spiritualist. She is not a preacher. She has no special line to God. She is simply a doctor; but one whose long life has been dedicated to helping people at this hour. From her many conversations with her patients, including numbers “who came back from the other side”, she has the perspective on this mystery that I am most prepared to trust. Here are some things she has said to help us understand our grief:

“Dying is nothing to fear. It can be the most wonderful experience of your life. It all depends on how you have lived. Death is simply a shedding of the physical body like the butterfly shedding its cocoon. It is a transition to a higher state of consciousness where you continue to perceive, to understand, to laugh, and to be able to grow.  You will not grow if you sit in a beautiful flower garden, but you will grow if you are sick, if you are in pain, if you experience losses, and if you do not put your head in the sand, but take the pain as a gift to you with a very, very specific purpose.For those who seek to understand it, death is a highly creative force. The highest spiritual values of life can originate from the thought and study of death.”

And so, as we take this gift we have received, with the full power of the affections we feel for V, we ought to determine to turn our lives to the best purposes we can make. By doing so we sanctify her gift to us and make it comprehensible and wonderful. This is Our moment. As she has brought us together, many not knowing the other, we have nevertheless been selected at this time to learn together through her, what precious opportunity we have in this precious little time.

I would like to quote from another learned mind, whose words on the subject are full of profound wisdom:

“The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light.
If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life.
For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.
In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond;
And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring.
Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.
Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour.
Is the shepherd not joyful beneath his trembling, that he shall wear the mark of the king?
Yet is he not more mindful of his trembling?
For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
And what is to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?
Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance. “

The light who walked among us on this dusty highway, has reached the mountain top, before we have. Our affections for her should fill us with gratitude for that. And we should wonder at the distance we still have to travel to reach it. We should not live in the delusion that our route is so very much longer or that our purposes are any less sacred. As we all experience V’s light we should not forget that we also must be lustrous and bright for others who follow yet a little further behind down the same roadway. It need not be a great lemming walk if we know where we are heading and we know why it is so important that we make the journey brightly.

I was remembering today the words of Dr Victor Frankl, in a lecture he gave at Melbourne University some years ago. As best I can remember them, he told the story of a man who came to see him one day at his consulting room in Vienna. The man said he was in deep despair for his wife had died and she had been his partner in all things for many many years. He said his loss was unbearable and he could see no point in going on with his own life without her. Dr. Frankl had already reached the understanding that our lives have no value if they are lived only for ourselves and he had a deep and compassionate understanding for this man. And so he asked,

“And you would have preferred that it was she who had survived you?”
The man became aghast at the thoughts he had been indulging, because he loved his wife.
“Why no!” he said, “That would have been terrible for her.”
“Then you now understand, how important it is that you survive her,” Frankl observed.

In other words, the fact that V has gone on a little before us, is only a cause for sadness and despair if we are unable to see the importance that we follow with courage and good purpose, behind her. That is what we must do. That is how we must honour the love and the friendship we feel towards her. That is what is right. That is why her brightness will continue to shine on us, illuminating the climbing path before us, that leads towards the same mountain top.

In support of these thoughts I want to offer you some more words from Elizabeth Kubler Ross,

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity and an understanding of life that fills them with compassions, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen. And after your death, when most of you for the first time realize what life here is all about, you will begin to see that your life here is almost nothing but the sum total of every choice you have made during every moment of your life. Your thoughts, which you are responsible for, are as real as your deeds. You will begin to realize that every word and every deed affects your life and has also touched thousands of lives. We run after values that, at death, become zero. At the end of your life, nobody asks you how many degrees you have, or how many mansions you built, or how many Rolls Royces you could afford. That’s what dying patients teach you.”

I know V hasn’t gone anywhere, it is only my own feeble limitations that make it seem so. So I want to take this moment now to publicly declare my deep gratitude to her and to D for their warm, wonderful friendship of the past few years. I look forward to an eternity of the same.

Thankyou.

© Chris Moloney 2004