Farewell, Janice

This is the morning of my sister Janice's funeral.

I still don't quite believe she's dead, and I guess that's really the function of a funeral: it's a ritual to allow us to let go of a loved on.

Unfortunately, I won't be there in person to witness her cremation and the ceremony. It would probably be good for me. Good closure and all that, and another rite of passage. I'm hoping I can do something today that's effective enough so that I can really be a part of the event.

I'm looking at the sun right now, which has just risen. It's a huge golden globe just above the treeline here, on a misty morning here in Austin. Shortly I'll be going down for a walk, then I'll see if I can buy some seeds to sow here and there.

But it's another day without her on this planet. Another day when I know I can't speak to her. She won't be on the end of the phone any more. No more letters, no more parcels. No more concern. No more words of wisdom. No more of her gentle ways.

Gradually, she'll be forgotten, along with all the dead people. All the people who have come and gone on this planet: the loved ones, who laughed and cracked jokes and loved and fought and made love and wrote poetry and worked and thought and prayed.

All the people who have lived lives here on Earth, and have done what we all do: these people have all lived and died and been remembered and then forgotten. And for each generation, they become more distant. Just as my grandmother isn't remembered by my nieces and nephew, Janice won't be remembered by her own grandchildren. There'll be stories, and there'll be photos, and maybe her grandchildren will want to know something about her. Maybe her distant descendants will. But none will have known her.

And the "lucky" ones will be in the history books. But will they? Will their personal thoughts and fears, and intimate moments, be in the history books? No, of course not. Besides, there's no ego for the dead.

All that can be done is living. Death isn't real, any more than darkness is. Death isn't a state, it's just an absence of life. We come and we go from this world, from this material existence. That's all.

But Janice is gone. In 45 minutes, her body will be burned. And that will be that.

We, the living, will get on with out lives, trying to make sense of them, and trying to find ways to be motivated. We will continue to live our lives in whatever ways we see fit. Some of us peacefully, some violently, some passive, some active. Some with live with passion, others not. But so long as we breathe, we live.

And at each moment, somewhere in the world new life is becoming, and death is doing its thing, too. Swathes of people, animals and vegetation are dying at this instant, as the hand of God waves across the land and life is breathed for the first time for so many.

Life comes and goes, all over the world, and all over other planets, somewhere. Life exists in this universe, and it's a miracle.

I thank God for this, my life. And I thank God for the life of my lovely sister, Janice Anne.

Farewell, Janice.