Tell me, what does your life look like? How do ‘they’ hear it? What are your tastes? How does it feel? What makes you laugh, and what makes you sad? What are your dreams, the things you yearn for? Where do you come from? What did you do? … Let me in.
Who am I to assume that privilege, you may ask? Well, firstly, this is what I do. I was nurtured and encouraged to be your voice at your funeral many years ago by family, friends, colleagues, and universities.
I believe in life before death and that every memory is a gift – a part of you which remains. Above all things, I believe in Love with a capital ‘L’ – Love makes the world go around. I’m a dad to four grown-up children and a teenager—a husband to a wonderful wife and a man with a mission. I hate suppressors, and people who are quick to judge. I love Classic FM and afternoon teas and chill out times with Bella, our Rottie.
Ralph Waldo Emerson writes that “to the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine.” I trust these words implicitly, and I suppose this lets you in on my mission – to help create sacred spaces and crossing places. With dignity and a sense of occasion, I retell your story. Our paths cross. In much the same way as when your path crossed the midwife who assisted with your birth. As the midwife communicates those first few words of joy, “it’s a girl!” or “it’s a boy,” I am the one who speaks those sacred words of commendation, “he is gone,” and “this is what she was like.”
My Mission?
Feel for the people we most avoid – strange or bereaved or never employed.
Feel for the women and feel for the men who fear that their living is all in vain.
Feel for the parents who’ve lost their child,
Feel for the women whom men have defiled,
Feel for the baby for whom there’s no breast, and
Feel for the weary who find no rest.
Feel for the lives by life confused, riddled with doubt, in loving abused;
Feel for the lonely heart, conscious of sin, which longs to be pure but fears to begin.
– John L. Bell