the service at the Crematorium
"You, our always daughter,
Will travel to our last morning,
Our hands clasped thro' corridors of time,
And we shall see a dawn together,
And the swallows will return."
From Carole and Phil Abel (Horsforth friends) 24.2.2OO3
The Service at Oxford Crematorium, Friday 28 February 2OO3
Jocelyn years ago gave me a book of famous prayers, one of which is by Karl Barth (Swiss theologian) for the use at start of worship. I want to use it, suitably amended, for this, our family Valedictory Service for Rosalind.
Let us pray: O Lord our God, You know who we are: - people with good consciences and bad, people content and discontent, certain and uncertain, Jews, Christians, agnostics - those who believe, those who half believe. Yet all of us are joined not only by family ties, but by a common love for our dear Rosalind, and by a desire to commend her to You, her Maker. In spite of all our differences, we are alike in our grief and bewilderment at our sudden separation from her - a dear daughter, a loving wife and sister, and a constant friend, but we also alike in wanting to thank You for the joy of knowing her and being loved by her. We all need Your love and grace, for we too must one day die, and we would be lost without Your forgiving love and the assurance that 'underneath are the Everlasting Arms of your mercy'. Blessed be Your Name. Amen.
"The Lord's love is surely not exhausted nor has His compassion failed: they are new every morning, so great is His Faithfulness". Those encouraging words come down to us over some 2SOO years from an unlikely source - the Book of Lamentations in the Hebrew Scriptures. They certainly provide the theme for our first hymn 'Great is Thy faithfulness!'
Short Prayer
Loving God, who brought us to birth, help us to live as those who are prepared for death. Enable us to hear Your message of death overcome and life renewed, that as we face the mystery of death, we may see the light of eternity. Amen.
Of course, we know that Ros is no longer here - only her poor afflicted body is left - and I believe that she has gone before us to a better place. We are naturally very sad - we mustn't be ashamed to have a good cry if we feel like it. After all, Jesus wept at His friend's grave. No, we cry not for our dear Ros, who will live on in our hearts, and is now at peace. We cry for Paul and ourselves, for we miss her so much. So let us take comfort from the words of Holy Scripture:
Bible Readings From the Hebrew Scriptures - Part of Psalm 103
"The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our misdeeds. For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His steadfast love to us: - as far as the East is from the West, so far He removes our transgressions from us.
As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on us. For He knows how we were made, He remembers that we are dust. But steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting and His righteousness to children's children".
From the Christian Scriptures - John 14: Jesus said on the night before His own death
"Do not let your hearts be troubled: believe in God - believe also in Me. In my father's house are many dwelling places: if it were not so, would I have told you I go and prepare a place for you? I will come again and take you to Myself, so that where I am, there you may be also".
Thus the Scriptures offer us comfort in our sorrow.
Address
After the larger service at Worcester College, this is our little family celebration of Ros' life, by we who thought we knew her better than most and certainly longer than many. Yet she still had the power to surprise us, even after death - to find out that she passed on a married woman (yet still a doughty feminist!). Unknown to all but a very few who were in the conspiracy of silence, Ros and Paul were married in Sri Lanka on 24 January 1997. Many friends have told how, throughout her seven years of cancer, she never complained or said "why should this happen to me?" She was always positive and remarkably philosophical. When her brother called her 'very brave', she metaphorically shrugged her shoulders and said "What's brave about it? There's no choice - I've just got to get on with it".
In contrast to such a spirit, I suspect that we want to cry out 'Why?' Why should this ghastly, insidious disease be allowed to rob us of a loving, active, strong, fit, outgoing woman in the prime of life? It makes no sense. We cry 'Where was God in all this? Was He just standing by helpless?'.
Maybe we can get a clue from the Biblical picture of the Suffering Servant, suggesting that far from 'sitting on His hands' (as it were) and doing nothing, God has in fact been in Ros' situation all along. Surely He has been in the prayers of many people around the country - some unknown to Ros personally - who supported her and gave her strength. She was told at the Bristol Cancer Centre: 'Never underestimate the power of prayer'.
Recently I heard a Holocaust survivor on the radio dealing with the question "Where was God?" in that suffering? His answer was that that God was there - with them in the camps, dormitories, gas chambers - suffering with them, giving them strength and comfort.
So with our dear Ros. Was not God there at the John Radcliffe in the skill of the surgeons, the care of the nurses, the expertise of the radiologists and physios?
Surely He has been there in the loving support and care of Paul all along, and recently I am sure He was with the amazingly generous and loving care from Fiona and her mother Diana, and Paul's family during Ros' last few days; care for her and for Paul, not to mention God being with her siblings and parents in their loving concern and care for her in her last hours. Certainly, I feel that the atmosphere at Fiona's on Wednesday and Thursday last week was truly spiritual, full of love - and where love is, God is.
As Paul and Barbara and I watched Rosalind's spirit slip away as the sun rose at 6.15am on February 2O~, I remembered St Francis of Assisi's verse:
'And thou most kind and gentle death,
Waiting to hush our latest breath, Thou leading home the child of God And Christ our Lord the way has trod'. :
As I have already suggested, we know, of course, that we haven't brought the real Ros into chapel here. She is free from pain and discomfort (and her perennial bad back!) and now she says "Cheer up!", with Julian of Norwich "All will be well, and all manner of things will be well".
Ros' old friend and youth club leader Jack Myers sent a card with these words: 'We don't say goodbye to those we love. It is right for us to weep, but there is no need for us to despair. They had pain here: they have no pain there. They struggled here: they have no struggles there. You and I might wonder why God took them home - but they don't. They are, at this very moment, at peace in the presence of God'.
So we want to celebrate Ros' life with real thanksgiving, for a woman who was a 'feisty fighter' (quoting one of our sympathy letters). She was loving and kind and generous from her earliest years, but that was her nature. She once told Barbara that one of her 'lifers' whom she had to visit as a Probation officer said to her: "You were the only one who stuck by me". That was Ros: our hearts go out in love and sympathy to Paul's daughter Emily and to Paul, our son-in-law, who has been a tower of strength to her over the past seven years.
In fact, both Ros and Paul have been examples to us all of courage, and strength and love, both refusing to buckle under the slings of outrageous fortune. Barbara and I are proud to have been Rosalind's parents, just as the Goodman's must be proud of Paul: we must all rally round and support him in his bereavement.
However, lest you are thinking that we have come here today to canonise St. Rosalind of Horsforth and oxford, lest you think that Ros was a paragon of virtue and too good to be true - I'm sure she would have a good giggle at the very thought! Like us, she . . . .
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. . . .day all would be well with them! That's what we are doing today for Ros: we're here to 'wave her round the corner' and all is well. So we can say:
"God be with you till we meet again,
May He go through life beside you
And through death in safety guide you,
God be with you till we meet again." Amen.
A Prayer for Rosalind
"Eternal God, in Your wisdom and Grace, You have given us joy through the life of Rosalind. We bless You for her and for our memories of her.
We thank You that Your goodness and mercy followed her all her life, even in the recent years of cancer. We thank You for her faithfulness in the tasks to which she was called: for all the good work she did in the Probation Service, and for the caring and conscientiousness and teamwork with others.
We are grateful that for Ros this world's tribulations and frustrations are over and death is past. We pray, Lord, that You will bring us, with her, to the joy of Your perfect Kingdom" Amen
Stand for Committal
Into Your loving arms, O God, into Your keeping, we commend our beloved Rosalind Watkinson Gill, at the end of her earthly life. We commit her body to be cremated, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Benediction The Aaronic Blessing
"The Lord bless and keep you, The Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, The Lord lift up the light of His countenance upon you, And grant you peace". Amen
