This year has really been my year to declutter, reorganize,
simplify, and just make life more honest and clean. It started with cleaning
out my garage and I had no idea where it would lead me… I quickly began to realize
that it isn’t just about releasing the stuff I had put away for a rainy day, or
the clothes that I never would wear again, or my receipts from the early 1980s.
I led me to look at what needed to be cleared out of the far reaches of my
mind. You know… those little niggling
things that you don’t realize are there, but at the same time, you know they
are taking up space.
One of those pieces was around the eulogy I gave at my son
Duncan’s Celebration of Life. Here I am over seven years later, and I still
regretted that I hadn’t given credit to the man who wrote the poem that I read
that day. His words gave such comfort to me, and I had searched high and low on
the internet to find them again, to find his name, so I could at least silently
thank him.
And then, lo and behold, I was asked last week to send my
favourite poem to a friend who was collecting poetry and I knew I wanted to
find this one. It had never occurred to me that I might have, way back then,
emailed myself with the gist of what I wanted to say at his service. My
meditation teacher had sent the poem to me… why didn’t I ask her for it? She would have known his name… I went back to
my January 2008 emails and I found a rough draft and there was the poem. And
the poet’s name. I now could thank him publicly for the comfort and
understanding he gave me. That’s what
I’m doing here…
Thank you Elias for your incredible ability to articulate
what it most surely was like for Duncan. I am humbled by your words and full of
gratitude for what you helped me understand and express that day.
Here is the draft that I found. It is not in its entirety
but I wanted to give Elias’ beautiful words some context, should he ever happen
upon this post.
No one knows how long
we are going to be here. Certainly Al,
Sean, and I, and of course all of you had no idea how short Duncan’s life was
to be. Often when someone dies, we regret not having said I love you enough
times. We regret not having said I’m
sorry for something we had done. We
regret not doing more things together. If
I were to let myself succumb to those kinds of thoughts and feelings, Duncan’s
passing would have been for nothing and I wouldn’t have been able to bear
it. Instead, I have been able to draw on
the love from my son Sean, Al and his family, my family, and all of you. And Duncan.
If I were to try and
tell you all the highlights of Duncan’s life, we would be here for hours. Instead, I want to tell you about some of the
things that happened during the last month of his life. He visited practically all his relatives back
East at Christmas. He had a ski day with
his dad. The last time I saw him in
person, Al, Sean, and I all played music with him. It was the first time that had happened. He even sang in front of me. Something he said he could never do. The day before he died, he skied with Sean
and friends. Then he went to work for a
while (and we all know how much he loved his work), and then off to a party
with many of his close friends. He came
home and went to sleep. I’d like to read
a poem that helps me understand what happened next.
You waited until you
were alone.
Death is a private
thing.
You knew your last act
was to a different audience.
As it entered you – oh
how you must have danced!
Curving toward God,
elegant, and alone.
Dear one, what is it
like?
Tell us! What is death?
Birth, you say, your
voice swathed in wings.
I am born in the
endless beginning, I am not. I am.
You start turning into
us, we who love you.
You weep in our
sadness, you laugh when we do,
You greet each moment
fresh, when we do.
So may your gift of
loving enter our own and be with us that way, forever.
We are all grieving
the loss of our beautiful Duncan. But I
don’t believe that I will never see him again.
I have already seen him. Have you
noticed…
And then I went on to talk about the amount of snow that had
fallen since he had passed (Duncan was an avid skier) and I then followed my
impulse to sing Amazing Grace to my boy. It was like I sang him to sleep. I
cannot tell you how real and completely immersed in the “peace that surpasses
all understanding” I was in that moment.
Thank you Elias. Thank you Duncan. You have both helped me open up space for the wonder
that is yet to come.
Branded by gratitude,
Authentically yours,
Buns
P.S. This song needs no introduction. It simply is... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsCp5LG_zNE
