Requiem

Today I had the pleasure of attending the UU choir concert (of which Christen is a member!) at church this morning. It was All Souls Sunday, and so we were honoring the dead with a beautiful and dark rendition of John Rutter's Requiem. Unlike other, more formal Requiems, this one blended the traditional Latin words with Psalms in English and some bluesy rifts that reminded me of Gershwin. My favorite was the movement: "Out of the Deep," which I would like played at my funeral perhaps.

And earlier in the service, Chris (our minister) gave a very touching homily, where he talked a little about his own experience with death-- his mother passing away not long ago. This is the poem he shared with us. What was more interesting than the poem, however, was his happening upon it exactly 1 year after the anniversary of his mother's stroke (which ultimately led to her death), and only realizing the sychronicity later.

David Whyte, "Farewell Letter" (From Everything is Waiting for You).

She wrote me a letter

after her death

and I remember

a kind of happy light

falling on the envelope

as I sat by the rose tree

on her old bench

at the back door,

so surprised by its arrival

wondering what she would say,

looking up before I could open it

and laughing to myself

in silent expectation.

Dear son, it is time

for me to leave you.

I am afraid that the words

you are used to hearing

are no longer mine to give,

they are gone and mingled

back in the world

where it is no longer

in my power

to be their first

original author

nor their last

loving bearer.

You can hear

motherly

words of affection now

only from your own mouth

and only

when you speak them

to those

who stand

motherless

before you.

As for me I must forsake

adulthood

and be bound gladly

to a new childhood.

You must understand

this apprenticeship

demands of me

an elemental innocence

from everything

I ever held in my hands.

I know your generous soul

is well able to let me go

you will in the end

be happy to know

my God was true

and I find myself

after loving you all so long,

in the wide,

infinite mercy

of being mothered myself.

P.S. All your intuitions were true.

And if I was closer with my mother, I am sure I would have cried like most of the congregation. But I am not. So instead I thought of my friend Melissa and her kind mother who died only a few years ago. And I tried to think of my Gran, but it is hard to be sentimental about such a hard and upright woman (built like a piano), whom I could never imagine crying in life. Still, I did have these thoughts for my Gran on this, All Souls Day: that perhaps she has learned to be happy in death as she never was in life... and that maybe some stray quark of her will appreciate that she lives on in my words (for I write stories about her). "well, ah nev-ah!" ;)