Posts tagged Final Resting
Excerpt from "The Little Prince"

If you love a flower that lives on a star, it is sweet to look at the sky at night. All the stars are a-blossom with flowers.

And at night you will look up at the stars. Where I live, everything is so small that I cannot show you where my star is to be found. It is better like that. My star will just be one of the stars, for you. And so you will love to watch all of the stars in the heavens. They will be your friends.

All men have the stars, but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travellers, these stars are guides. For others, they are no more than little lights in the sky.

But all these stars are silent. You – you alone – will have the stars as no one else has them and in one of the stars, I shall be living. In one of them, I shall be laughing when you look at the sky at night.

And when your sorrow is comforted, for time soothes all sorrows, you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, just for that pleasure.'

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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At Home, At The Bedside, At the Cemetery, At the Funeral Home, Physical Gathering, Living Memorial, Holidays, First Year MilestonesAmy CunninghamAt Death, Final Resting Place, Final Resting, First Year Milestones, After Death, First Anniversary, Commemorative Event
High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, --and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of --Wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air...
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark or even eagle flew --
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

—John Gillespie Magee

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At the Crematorium, At The Crematorium, Holidays, Physical Gathering, Ash ScatteringAmy CunninghamAfter Death, Final Resting
Epitaph


By Merrit Malloy

When I die

Give what’s left of me away

To children

And old men that wait to die.

And if you need to cry,

Cry for your brother

Walking the street beside you.

And when you need me,

Put your arms

Around anyone

And give them

What you need to give to me.

I want to leave you something,

Something better

Than words

Or sounds.

Look for me

In the people I’ve known

Or loved,

And if you cannot give me away,

At least let me live on in your eyes

And not your mind.

You can love me most

By letting

Hands touch hands,

By letting bodies touch bodies,

And by letting go

Of children

That need to be free.

Love doesn’t die,

People do.

So, when all that’s left of me

Is love,

Give me away.

I'll see you at home

in the earth.

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At the Cemetery, At the Crematorium, At The Crematorium, Burial, Green Burial, Ash ScatteringAmy CunninghamFinal Resting, Final Resting Place
Marge Piercy's Kaddish

Look around us, search above us, below, behind.
We stand in a great web of being joined together.
Let us praise, let us love the life we are lent
passing through us in the body of Israel
and our own bodies, let’s say amein.

Time flows through us like water.
The past and the dead speak through us.
We breathe our children’s children, blessing.

Blessed is the earth from which we grow,
blessed the life we are lent,
blessed the ones who teach us,
blessed the ones we teach,
blessed is the word that cannot say the glory
that shines through us and remains to shine
flowing past distant suns on the way to forever.
Let’s say amein.

Blessed is the light, blessed is the darkness
but blessed above all else is peace
which bears the fruits of knowledge
on strong branches, let’s say amen.

Peace that bears joy into the world,
peace that enables love, peace over Israel
everywhere, blessed and holy is peace, let’s say amein.

-- Marge Piercy
 

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Ash Scattering, At Home, At The Bedside, At the Cemetery, Green Burial, Group Readiness, Immediately After Death, Inurnment, Physical Gathering, Virtual Gathering, Washing and DressingKateyanne UnullisiAfter Death, Final Resting, Final Resting Place
When a Great Soul Dies

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.

-- Maya Angelou

 

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At Home, Burial, At The Funeral Home, InurnmentAmy CunninghamCommemorative Event, Final Resting