I received a call from a good friend of mine a few days ago at 3 a.m. (Paris Time) telling me that another friend of ours had passed away. It brought back memories of other close friends of mine who had also passed over. I had briefly written about a good friend who was cremated in an article that I wrote for the Paris Traveler.
I had never been to a cremation before so I didn’t know what to expect. When my good friend Erick died, family and close friends went to Père-Lachaise to see him. He wasn’t made up to look like he was just sleeping, instead traces of his illness were still evident in his face. His body looked tiny even in the small plain wooden coffin where he was placed. Each of us got to say our final good-byes to him.
We were then asked who wanted to be there for the cremation and who wanted to wait in another room; I wanted to stay with my friend for as long as possible, so I remained. In an adjacent room, the coffin was closed and placed on what looked like a small trolly track. Chairs were lined up on both sides of the track and we each took a seat, while others stood behind those of us who were seated.
A loud humming noise penetrated the room and I wondered at first what it was. I very quickly realized that the noise was the furnace which had been ignited. Moments later, a metal door (like a large dumb waiter) was lifted up and we could see the flames burning inside through the opening. Slowly the coffin rolled down the track to the opening and into the furnace. Once the coffin was completely inside, the metal door slid back down and closed. I was stunned. We were then taken to the room where the others were waiting.
I really can’t say how long we waited, it seemed like an hour, but it also seemed like forever. Eventually the funeral director brought in Erick’s ashes in a large urn that was given to his family. We slowly walked back to our cars and became a small procession as we made our way through the streets of Paris on our way to Normandie. Several hours later we arrived at our destination. The sky was overcast with thick gray clouds. We began our climb to a walking bridge in the beautiful green countryside.
As we climbed, we spoke about our memories of our two dear friends; Erick’s partner Eric had also passed away a few years earlier. When all of us had reached the top, we walked to the middle of the bridge with the river flowing beneath us. Erick’s brother opened the urn and released some of the ashes and handed it to his sister, and then it was passed on.
I’m not exaggerating when I say, as a slight breeze blew away the last ashes into the air and they trickled down to the water, at that moment, the clouds parted and a magnificent beam of sunlight broke through shining and shimmering on the water. Then someone said, “Look!” There were two beautiful white doves that circled over our heads and then flew away. We watched until they were two little specks in the sky and then they were gone! It was amazing!
Maya Muses: I know! Some will say it was just a coincidence, but don’t forget, I don’t believe in coincidences! For me, it was our two Eric(k)s letting us know they were well and together again, and sending us their love before returning “home”!
Photo Credits: Flickr and Personal Photos
11 responses so far ↓
1 Mia // Sep 16, 2008 at 11:10 am
Will leave a comment on this later!
You know what I think of this anyway!
Now I will go out and by a jeans-skirt!
Twitter!I never heard of it before!
Hugs!
2 Lynn // Sep 16, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Twitter is a place where you can write, in one or two sentences, what you are doing at that moment. Some people like to use it as an IM to get into discussions with strangers and keep their real IMs for family and friends. The only drawback there is you can’t get into detail what you’re talking about because you only have 140 characters to work with.
Then again that’s what is appealing to a lot of people, they can talk to anyone in just a few short sentences.
The blue square on the right: “what am I doing…” is from Twitter. I “tweet” once in a while, not often.
3 Mia // Sep 17, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Don’t think that kind of twitter is for me!
I think it is too much of this in life already!
We call it “snuttefication”
You know; short,fast, and leaves you with a shallow feeling!
Will comment about the real topic later!
4 Mia // Sep 19, 2008 at 6:54 pm
Okay…
I think it was them for sure….
Have to come back again,because I have to get off the PC for awhile!
To talk about Death and these things are very interesting….Why are we so afraid of doing that?
5 Lynn // Sep 19, 2008 at 9:15 pm
I know! I wrote a poem about Death and the first line of the poem is:
“Why am I so afraid to die, afraid to be free?”
Oh that’s right, you’ve read it! I wrote a post about my other friend’s funeral and I read my poem. Everyone afterwards came up to me and told me how much they loved my poem.
I love talking about death and dying….some friends tell me I’m morbid when I talk about death, but I tell them it’s a part of life, something we all have to go through, so what’s wrong with talking about it?!
By putting our head in the sand and not talking about it, doesn’t make it go away!
All it is, is going home.
6 Mia // Sep 20, 2008 at 2:48 pm
True!
I love talking about it too…Have no problem with that…
We have had some strange experiences with death and dying….
Some years ago a coworker died in our shop…
Ulf was home having a cold and Christer was taking care of the shop…
Our phone rang…The woman in the flower shop next door called and said that Ulf had to come to the shop….The ambulance was there and Christer was lying on the floor…
Ulf took the bike and when he came into the shop and saw Christer lying there ,he new he was gone… He felt it!
A costumer said that he had talked to her just 10 minutes ago and then he got back behind the desk,sat down and suddenly turned blue and fell over the desk!A major heart attack!
I asked Ulf what he felt…
He said it was strange…He was thinking; “there is Christer and he is dead,I just talked to him a couple of hours ago….There one minute,gone the next….”
And he thought, like you said,”he has gone home”…
There was no sadness,just acceptance,this is life,we all have to die…
The funeral was a happy event…
The strange thing is,that just one month before,a young girl died just above our shop,we know her parents…
She was 13-14…t was springtime and hot…they had the windows open,she was sitting on the floor reading,and suddenly the wind took hold on the window and the glass broke…
A sharp piece of glass hit her right between two ribs and punctured her aorta!Her mom was home,but could do nothing,she bled to death….
We all were in shock…How could such a thing happen,how….Again; one minute there the next gone…
This was harder to accept…because she was young,and this unlikely thing happened…
It took them a long time to get over this…
Makes you wonder about a lot of things,doesn’t it?
Gosh I have lots of “stories” about death…
Like the friends who when their friend died,took the urn with his ash and went to all his favorite places and “drank him up”…they put little of his ash in the beer….It is true….
Death is nothing to be afraid of…It is like going home….
7 Lynn // Sep 20, 2008 at 9:24 pm
I don’t know if I would want to drink my friend’s ashes, but that’s terrible about the young girl! The wind must have been incredibly strong for it to break the glass! Her poor parents!
Isn’t that always the case? When someone we love dies, we mourn more for ourselves than for the person going home. Otherwise, we would be happy for them. The sadness is really for those of us who are left behind and how much we are going to miss them.
8 Mia // Sep 21, 2008 at 5:45 pm
That is so true!
Because when I had that experience of being dead…I was so happy to “go home”…I didn’t want to go back,but had to….
I have a friend who died at the “operation table”…
She saw herself lying there,she herd what everyone said,she was not afraid, but she “knew” that she had to come back,she felt the pain when back in her body again…After this experience she changed her life completely…
Well,that is a different story..
I have read a lot of books after my experience about death….
Elisabeth Kübbler Ross is just one of them…
I know that the best thing you can do is to send love to the person who is dying or just have died…to let go….
9 Lynn // Sep 21, 2008 at 8:05 pm
Yes, EKR was a pioneer as was Dr. Raymond Moody! I’ve read all their books and then some!
Life After Life
,Life After Death
, Death After Life,On Death and Dying
, etc.! Lol. I have two whole shelves in my library on this subject alone!10 Mia // Sep 22, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Really?!
Yeah I read Moody too….
Gosh,If we,no when we meet,we will have too much to talk about!!!!
I learned to do past life regressions too….
That was interesting too….
Don’t do it much now,because we live here and now….You can get too interested in the past….and the future too for that matter….
Another topic!
11 Lynn // Sep 23, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Me too! I was really into past life regressions, I know of several past lives that I had that were very interesting. No, I wasn’t someone famous, I mean interesting because they relate to my present life so well.
I have an interesting “incident” that happened in my family a couple of years ago. I’ll tell you about it soon, but I don’t have time right now. I need to go out and do some shopping!
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