Poem: Death Is Nothing At All

DEATH IS NOTHING AT ALL

I have only slipped away into the next room

I am I and you are you

Whatever we were to each other

That we are still

Call me by my old familiar name

Speak to me in the easy way you always used

Put no difference into your tone

Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow

Laugh as we always laughed

At the little jokes we always enjoyed together

Play, smile, think of me, pray for me

Let my name be ever the household word that it always was

Let it be spoken without effort

Without the ghost of a shadow in it

Life means all that it ever meant

It is the same as it ever was

There is absolute unbroken continuity

What is death but a negligible accident?

Why should I be out of mind

Because I am out of sight?

I am waiting for you for an interval

Somewhere very near

Just around the corner

All is well.

Nothing is past; nothing is lost

One brief moment and all will be as it was before

How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!


~ Canon Henry Scott-Holland, 1847-1918,
Canon of St Paul's Cathedral

The Truest Thing About Brendan

E-mail Exchange between Brendan's Mum & Me:

For years I've felt that Brendan was on this earth for a purpose greater than being son, brother, friend, lover. There was a purpose far beyond my imagination and probably not fully known by him but a force that drove him to be the person he was. It linked both his outward personality, his interaction with the world and the way he connected with others, and his inner spirit that gave him such bad dreams. I felt when he was sleeping he was processing not just the battle within himself but carrying the problems of many others in his subconscious.

This all may seem quite pretentious and highfaluting, hey, what do I know. But that's just my sense of things.

Thank you for sending this my way Wendy. It helps a lot.

Love,

C.

Wendy McMullen <mcmullen@ucsc.edu>	7:35 AM (5 hours ago)
to Corinne

I could also sense this about Brendan. I think the most helpful part of my personal grief over Brendan, is that I feel at least one person really understood the private workings of Brendan's inner life and accepted him completely.  And that is you Corinne.  (Luckily he knew that)  I've said this all before in a myriad of ways.  

I had truly followed my intuition when interacting & just "being" with Brendan.  I guess you could say, I let my love and my own "inner compass" guide me with Brendan (or maybe it was the "mother ship"  guiding me). Brendan was endlessly fascinating and captivating to me.  I was thinking how many roles he played in my life. This has only really come to me after reading quotes by CS Lewis referring to his wife Joy Davidman.  So I model some of the following descriptions after Lewis.  

Since Brendan has left us in physical form I feel that he is bigger than ever in my life.  We are coming up on the fourth month of his physical absence and I've had time to reflect on the emptiness I feel, and where that emptiness is for me. Or as CS Lewis says, "the amputation". However, for me the "amputation" is not in one place. It's in different parts of my life, my human cells, and my character. All have been disrupted.  

Brendan was my co-pilot. my first mate, my friend, my lover, my kid brother, my troubled child. He expressed frustration and anger about the world so that I didn't have to.  He showed me how to follow my true self (no matter how outrageous) and not apologize for it.  (Aside from my children) He was the most beautiful being I've ever met in my life.  

Everyone says the same about their fallen beloved so it sounds cliche. But for me it's the truest statement that I know for sure.  Brendan was a magical being, he was one of kind. There was no one like him before he arrived and there will never be another like him on the planet again.  I somehow have to find peace with that. 

CS Lewis inspired and help put words to what role Brendan was in my life. This is his description of his relationship with Joy Davidman after she died.

She was my daughter and my mother, my pupil and my teacher, my subject and my sovereign; and always,

holding all these in solution, my trusty comrade, friend, shipmate, fellow-soldier. My mistress; but at the same time all that any man friend (and I have good ones) has ever been to me. Perhaps more.

C. S. Lewis

Brendan: You Are In My Heart, In My Soul, In My Cells Now...

CHANGE OF ADDRESS

You didn't die
you just changed shape

became invisible
to the naked eye

became this grief

it's sharpness
more real

than your presence was

before you were separate to me
entire to yourself

now you are
a part of me

you are inside my self

I call you
by your new name

'Grief...Grief! '

although I still call you
'Love.'

~Dónall Dempsey