Death of a friend

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

At the end of what seems to have been a summer lived in the shadow of death, today was the funeral of a friend and choir member whose demise was, sadly, pretty rapid. But church was full of people to see him off, most people went to the commital at the crematorium, and then a good number of us went to the pub (which — if you want to picture it — is not dissimilar to The Jockey in Shameless) and drank beer in the same seats in which he drank pints of Mild and, latterly, gin and slimline tonic. His widow, in inimitable Mancunian fashion, was first to the bar, and bought herself an orange Bacardi Breezer.

How does someone left behind, whose life was for decades structured around that single person, reinvent their self? What are the new parameters for life, where do they come from, and why are they there? I imagine the truth is that, after that single, unrepeatable loss, life is never the same again, and never as full and truly lived again; the future becomes something to cope with rather than enjoy. But there are exceptions, and I hope my friend will be one. North Manchester folk certainly wrap themselves round you in a crisis, and, in spite of material poverty, I can't imagine a richer place to be at a time like this.

Tagged: death, friend, friendship, choir, choral, funeral, scottholland, henryscottholland, poetry, poem, dying, living, church, manchester, northmanchester, family, shameless.

Labels: poetry