I want to write about this.

I just saw a little mouse on the paving outside my window, looking here and there, then deciding to make dash for the other side, almost flying in his haste.

I want to write about saying goodbye to Daniel. When I first heard that he had died one of the things I remember thinking was I’m a happy person – how can I go on being a happy person now? Almost three weeks later I realise that I can still be a happy person. There is a new sadness also, but it is a sadness tinged with peace. A strange sadness that will perhaps always be present, but a constructive sadness, a sadness I can use.

Through the days of these last three weeks I have travelled a million miles, travelled across all the years. I have, just this morning, read the words from the Bhagavad Gita which Ross called to mind at the funeral yesterday. Arjuna has refused to join the battle and Krishna says:

 

Your words are wise, Arjuna, but your sorrow is for nothing. The truly wise mourn neither for the living nor the dead.

There never was a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor any of these kings. Nor is there any future in which we shall cease to be.

Just as the dweller in this body passes through childhood, youth and old age, so at death he merely passes into another kind of body. The wise are not deceived by that.

 

Father Tom offered another sort of eternity, and these eternities are comforting to many. I neither accept nor reject them. What I want to write about here is my journey from despair to a kind of peace, and this was also Daniel’s last journey. He chose to leave, I choose to live. I am seeing the world more clearly because of this, and if I see Daniel in a little mouse on my terrace, I am happy about that. The journey has been tumultuous. My feeling were different every day. At one stage I was choosing a word of the day. Despair – anger –  sadness – bewilderment – whatever – sorrow – rage – love. One night about a week in I could not sleep and I sat up in bed and wrote about love and death, the words I read out yesterday at the funeral. Here is what I wrote:

 

Death is not about the dead.

Daniel’s life is complete – his mission on Planet Earth is over –

Death is a gift to the living – all of us here – a reminder – a screaming voice.

Yes, sure, we are here to celebrate Daniel’s life, to remember, to give thanks, to love him.

But he has left us.

Death is not about the dead.

Death is a special opportunity for the living. It is moments like this – in particular when the person has died suddenly and unexpectedly – it is moments like this that give us the best opportunity to celebrate our own lives – and live those lives fully – do our loving fully – make choices – make decisions – be fully alive.

We can think about Daniel – with the angels – in a snowflake – in each glittering raindrop – in the wind – in an autumn leaf floating down to earth – in his son Michael – in his family – in his friends – all of us

Moments like this, days like this, these are the great moments in our lives when we can ask the great questions of ourselves and when we can make actual changes in our own lives, when we can be the person we always wanted to be.

Daniel’s life was Daniel’s life and in a little while we will carry him out of here and put him in the back of my van and take him to his burial place and what is left is our love for him – and yes, we do need to remember that he could be a total pain in the ass – I suspect all of us have had moments of complete exasperation with him, and worse, but we are here because the love outweighs the anger and hurt – the love surpasses everything else.

Our opportunity now is to love ourselves in the way we love Daniel now, and leave all the rest behind.

That is Daniel’s final gift, his finest one.

 

That’s the thing. Our opportunity now is to love ourselves in the way we love Daniel now and leave all the rest behind.

But I’m straying a bit from the journey. The desire, right from the start, was to organise a fantastic ceremonial send-off. We did it! And all along the journey I was supported by Kari, Daniel’s mother, and led and supported by Ellen, Daniel’s sister. She was the amazing driver of the desire, the devastated little sister who had lost a big brother who she had always loved without condition.

On the second weekend I noticed there was a Biodanza workshop in London, and I decided to go. No further planning could be done over the weekend, and I needed other people who were just other people to be around me. I had not noticed that the workshop was called The Power of Gratitude. I wrote the following few words just after:

 

The power of Biodanza, really! I arrived at the weekend between the death of my son, aged 41, suddenly, and the funeral. And just before I left home I heard that the funeral may not be able to go ahead as planned.

Anything but grateful.

And then we sat around in the opening circle and passed around our names and something we were grateful for. I’m Jenny and I’m grateful for my health; I’m Max and I’m grateful for my family; etc. What am I going to say?

I’m very sad, I said, and I’m grateful for the Biodanza family.

And then the dancing began and I realised that there was so much to be grateful for, and I came away from the weekend feeling peaceful and nourished – still sad, of course, but also happy, and amazed at the wonderful healing power of this wonderful practice that I stumbled across a few years ago..

And now, on Monday morning I can deal with the challenges of the week. They are great, but I will do it with peace and love.

 

Biodanza, really! Find a class if you can. It is just incredible. I know it is shameless to plug it here, but it is holding me now, at a time when I most need to be held, it is holding me with love and compassion. It allows me to be held.

Advert over. The funeral – not the funeral – the celebration of Daniel’s life. It really was a celebration. At the end of the second day – you see – not the normal couple of hours at the crem – at the end of the second day I stood to make a toast with close family and friends and I think I used words like magical and wonderful and celebration. And later, after I had left, Kari and Isabel and a few others went outside for a little smoke and noticed that the hotel was called the Angel, and the waxing moon was shining. Nobody seemed to have noticed before that the hotel was called the Angel.

The remembering began in the funeral parlour. Ellen wanted to see the body. I was very clear that I did not. I was wrong. To see him there, peaceful, there and not there gave me a moment of understanding. It is not something I can easily put into words. Ellen knew. In her it was instinctive and certain, and I had helped to organise it with her, to make it possible. There was a little room at the funeral parlour, just off the main reception area and no more than ten feet from Grove Road, a shopping street in Eastbourne. We had planned to decorate the room before Daniel was brought in, but he was already there when we arrived. He’s just inside the door, Kevin warned. Ellen worried about me, knowing I had said I did not want to do this, but I think I had already changed my mind. And then there he was. I’m standing in the doorway. Ellen is there, and Kevin, the funeral director. Outside a man with a guitar is locking up his bike, and other people are walking up and down the street, shopping. A half turn and there he is, very tall, his hands together, his fingers very long. He’s peaceful.

Outside the people go on up and down. The man with a guitar comes in, he’s Victor, very sad. He knew Dan well. Later his son arrives. They play music. There’s Dan, there’s Ellen putting up Dan’s pictures, pictures he had on his walls in the last place he lived, there’s Victor and his son, there’s Kevin sitting quietly, and there are the people in the street. Life and death together. That is what I understand – that life and death exist together, part of the same thing. We’re clear about it in the garden – the flowers, the compost. With people we tend to hide death, shy away from it, be frightened by it. And here it was, part of the world, real. This was the most profound – and also the simplest – moment for me.

At two o’clock we left and found our hotels. Ellen had the best deal, a sea view and dog friendly. Scully was arriving later, with Tarot. Louise would join me; the next appointment at the church, where Daniel is due to arrive at four. Ellen hasn’t eaten all day so I make her buy some food. She buys two small pork pies and gives me one. We meet Kari and Ross. We wait. Actually I think we went in and talked to Father Tom about the procedure, and he showed Ross and I the pall and how to lay it over the casket. Daniel will lie in the church overnight, and we will say evensong at five-thirty, and then leave him. In the morning the pallbearers will move him to centre-stage for the service. Just a thought, he always lived centre-stage, didn’t he. In death as in life.

 

I’m looking out into the garden, looking for the mouse. It’s Monday now. I’ll finish writing this today. Yesterday I danced Biodanza with Louise and we swam in the sea on the nudist beach in Brighton. There were no other bathers, just a couple of dog walkers and a girl watching the world from a rock, who gave us a thumbs up as we left. The service went off well, don’t they say. I read my bit, shown above, and a Mary Oliver poem, In Blackwater Woods. There were lovely words from Ross and Isabel and Pippa, and James read a poem of thanks written by Daniel’s mother, Kari. Poppy sang and Corin played the organ. We sang a couple of hymns (note to self- hymns at funerals don’t really work – why?), and we had Daniel and the Lion’s Den from the bible, stopping before they feed the wives and children to the lions. Father Tom did a good sermon likening Daniel to Daniel. There were lots of people. We were guided by a beautiful Order of Service prepared and produced by Alana, and we ate food and drank tea organised by Alana and James.

This is my story; my experience of the death of a son at the age of forty-one when I am sixty-five. This is my journey. I am writing it for myself, first and foremost, but I will publish it on my blog and Facebook in the hope it will help others to deal with tragic loss. I am inspired to do this partly by my friend Ben, who has cancer and is writing about undergoing chemotherapy each week. We have taken the mystification of the difficult parts of life too far, and we need to get these things back into our day to day lives, so that when they happen to us we know what to do. My leader here in this has been my daughter Ellen, utterly bereft at the loss of a brother, but with an instinctive certainty that has driven us forward to celebrate Daniel.

They take Daniel in his casket, his name painted on the side by Pippa, and put him into my van, as I envisioned just a week after his death. We had a conversation about it, him and me, and he said, clear as anything, ‘Fuck it, let’s do it!’ And we did.

And now I had two hours alone with my son, as we drove to his burial place. First we listened to the highlights of last night’s play in the cricket. It was going quite well at that stage. Then a few angels singing with John Sheppard’s Media Vita, then silence. And just before we got there I banged on the lid quite a few times and suggested that he wake now, before it was too late. How many people get to bang on the top of a coffin and shout? Not many. I guess. Do it, if you get the chance. There is something brilliant about it.

The burial place is at the East Meon Sustainability Centre and on the South Downs Way towards Winchester. It is a beautiful place. On arrival I was met by Charlie, the assistant manager, and he led me down to a waiting place. We waited for others to arrive. There is an outdoor room and we assembled there around the fire. Ellen (again Ellen) had contacted many of Dan’s friends from Winchester days, many of them musicians, and they came to East Meon. The rest of us arrived from Eastbourne. When we had all assembled the pall-bearers – friends and family this time – Tony, Isabel, James, Will, Tom, Edward, Michael, Sam Marsh, Andrew, Maik, Scully – hauled the casket out of the van onto the bier, instructed by Al, the site manager. When everyone was ready we set off through the woods, chanting Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna. We wanted to cover all bases, religion wise. It is a long way through the woods, and we walked slowly. After a time we fell silent, and the woodland sounds took over. At the graveside we read poems, and then the first-time pall-bearers lowered the casket into the ground with supreme love and care.

Daniel was a brilliant musician and artist and poet. My regret is that I saw more of the clouds than the sunshine when he was alive. That is a sadness. But I won’t end this with a regret. He lived, by nobody else’s rules. I overheard someone say he was the most naturally gifted guitar player they had ever met. When we got back to the fire there was music and song. Ellen played on his last guitar and sang a song he had taught her. Tony played Meet on the Ledge (I always thought it was Meat) and Karen sang while Juliet read a Yeats poem that Jacob had chosen, Rosa made food which Lily transported. Scully played and sang. Will, having left his violin on the train, played somebody else’s guitar. His small children and Sara added to the magic, and Tarot searched for cake.

I’m a different person now. I’m sadder and I’m happier. I’m more alive and more in love with Louise than ever. I’m closer to all my family. Daniel’s life has given me something I could not have received in any other way, and I will always, always be grateful for it. We did good, Kari!

At the end Juliet stood and raised a glass and thanked Kari and me for producing Daniel. Thank you, Juliet, for Jacob, Lily and Rosa. And finally, from my heart, thank you Bar for our time together, and for Sam, Tom and Ellen.