LEE KLINGER LESSER
Eulogy for Charlotte at the Memorial Service at Green Gulch Farm
Dear Charlotte,
I woke up speaking to you this morning on the filmy edge between sleeping and being awake…Perhaps you were speaking to me too. This edge where you have spent so much time with so many of us….infiltrating into our consciousness with new possibilities for really waking up. I was not sure that I wanted to speak during this time of the memorial to you…but when I woke up with you this morning it was clear that I did.
After I got up, I went up into the hills for a run. It was a warm morning with a gentle sun, the light shimmering on the water and the fog rolling in from the ocean below the hilltops. I always feel like I am in a painting from the orient when I am in the hills running above the fog. I looked out towards Muir Beach and thought of you. As I ran, I let the planning meeting we held yesterday to organize this service run through me. We were surrounded by the wonderful photographs of your many lives from infancy to this last year of your life. And you were held in deep and great love by each of us in my living room, Norman, Fu, Wendy, Len, Sara and I. It was a lovely meeting, feeling how to honor you and greet you and celebrate you.
Many thoughts and memories swirled gently through me as I was running. I had been running for about thirty minutes….and I was thinking of the conversation in our memorial planning meeting about whether or not to have fire and flame in the beginning of the ceremony. Apparently the tradition is to light a flame, see it burn and then to put it out as a symbol of the ending or completion of a life. Norman said he didn’t think that was appropriate because neither you, nor any of us want the flame to go out. I joked that we should buy one of those trick birthday candles that when you try to blow it out it keeps relighting itself.
I was chuckling to myself about this and about your flame not going out, when in the next second… ZAP a consuming force knocked into me and swept me off my feet, flat onto the ground….full body prostration, full body blow And I knew it was you.
I was on a completely flat part of the trail where I run regularly. I have never particularly believed in ghosts or really thought about them. I do believe in you. I could feel you. The communion was exquisitely clear. In my stunned state I acknowledged your presence and said “Whoa, I know there is something you really want me to hear. I’ll be with you in a minute…” I felt breathing return…I lay flat on the ground, still recovering, shaken, bleeding, scraped and bruised… little by little gathering somehow back into my self….Gradually, I stood …still stunned but no significant injuries…
When I was ready, I stood there and opened to hear what it was that you clearly needed to tell me… and I heard you. You slugged me and jolted me through and through. I could feel you, in all of your silent and potent fierceness saying, “Don’t you dare!!! Don’t you dare make light of what it will take to keep this flame lit… of what it will take for you to keep it lit…of what it will take for each person to keep it lit!!!
There is no trick candle that will relight! The only way that this flame will relight is with what each of you do. This is the heart of my life and work and this is not something to joke about! You had better take it seriously.
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