For nyghtshayde

For most of this day, I shall be engaged in a somewhat solemn duty. I'll let you know when I'm done.

Solemn Duty

I went to the crem to lay a friend to rest today.

A week before last Sunday Steven Roberts, this friend of mine I'd known for some thirty years, collapsed whilst out fishing. This quiet, patient, gentle man had suffered from epilepsy for a long time, and he suffered a grand mal seizure. Despite the air ambulance's prompt arrival, he could not be saved. He passed on the Monday morning.

The authorities released the body after a post mortem had been carried out, and today the body of my old friend Steven Roberts, known to me as "Big Steve" and to his other friends as "Wookie," was finally committed.

I managed to make it in time for the gathering outside the front entrance of Pantybychan Crematorium. The sun felt so hot and strong on my head and body, shining out of a sky lightly dotted with tiny fluffy puffs of cloud. The crem itself was outside of town, set among trees in a sprawling peace garden.

I bumped into Nick, of course, and some other friends of Steve's. I kind of let people talk around me, bonding with one another. I don't know why it happens, but I kind of get used to standing alone, just watching things happening around me rather than getting involved in conversations. I always seem to mind my surroundings.

I saw a single solitary magpie. One big, gorgeous bird. It came within a metre of me, hopped away, perched briefly atop a bench nearby for a moment and took off when people began approaching. Well, other people. I don't know if it seemed to count me as a person.

And then it was time. Everybody filed into the single storey crem, all the plus signs on display, tall thin priest in cassock looking like somebody'd draped a tablecloth over a hatstand. Lovely voice, though, like honey. Good orator. Made everybody feel at ease.

At one point, while the priest was droning on about "good and faithful servant," I was silently whispering the words of the Extreme Unction. Below are the formal words laid down by Peter J Carroll:-

"Be without fear as The Great Transfiguration begins.

"Fantastic and terrifying visions are illusory, laugh at them and reject them, they cannot touch you now, go beyond.

"You will come to the secret of your being, which may seem as a dazzling brilliance, or as an awesome darkness, or as both these things and more.

"It is your choice to become one with this source if you so will it. It is your choice to remain separate if you will this instead.

"If you would remain separate, then you must seek a new life. In seeking rebirth, seek the emanations of love, vitality and intelligence; go where there is strength and freedom.

"Do What Thou Wilt."

We all must choose, when we die, to return to that Source from which life and consciousness springs, or to come back and to do the dance of life and death again. I can only hope that in the Summerlands where Steven Roberts' soul rests waiting, that his choice be a good one next time around; that he come back in a body free of the condition which killed him, on good health, and that next time he lives a good, long, full and fulfilled lifespan, whatever species he emerges as.

And if he chooses to return to the Source, then his journey is now over. Done with Existence and Non-existence, he returns to the Void like a tired child home from a really wild circus.

On concluding the all too brief ritual (they'd only just committed and laid to rest Tex Burke from one of my old places of work not an hour before) the staff led everybody out through the back door, past the coat rack priest with his incredibly weak, limp fish handshake, and back out into the sunlight.

On my way out, of course, with everybody else I filed past Big Steve lying there. I found myself saying "All right, Steve. Good to see you again. One last time." Among the small pile of pound coins I'd left him in the collection as an ofrenda, two pennies.

You know why.

And that was that: that was my solemn duty. 'Tis done, and the world is much diminished with the passing of one of the calmest, gentlest, quietest, most patient, warmest friends I have ever had the privilege of knowing. A good, solid friend whose like I shall never see again in this life cycle.

Rest easy, old friend. Rest easy.

Afterthought

Today's solemn duty impacted on a lot of people. They realised bitterly that they would never again see my old friend Big Steve alive in this cycle of life.

Some people might be going to bed right now feeling broken up inside at that thought. Some others are probably wrestling with thoughts about their own mortality right now. I am sorry if you're reading this and you happen to be one of those people for whom the Unthinkable Thought has struck you for the first time.

You know the one:- "Some day, sooner rather than later, I am going to die."

Yes. That one.

What was today's impact on me?

It reminded me of the importance of now. This moment, now, is the only moment that is. That means that right now is the only time that truly matters, because once this moment has slipped, that's it. Gone. You can't bring it back.

So there I was, all day, writing away at my story knowing that it cannot write itself.

Living in the now. Doing the thing that I love.

When it's my turn, I hope that it happens while I am writing, possibly my twentieth or later novel, with a final twist unfinished sentence and a missing ending that will keep you all guessing forever.