14 Aug Farewell doesn’t exist

With everything I be (or do) in my life, I’m working on creating greater consciousness. Regularly I sing on funerals and there’s (besides theatre) practically no place where listeners are more willing to receive every word, every note, every vibration. That brings me as a performing artist into motion simultaneously.

I’d like to speak on funerals, I perceive me doing that; was what I was thinking on a Tuesday in November. So I took a few steps and within 10 days I was doing or being my first funeral ceremony as a speaker. Back when I was a teenager, I sometimes shouted out: “I wish to be a singing pastor: I like to make the world more conscious, more pretty”. In fact I am now doing what I yelled back then. My sense of faith has changed in the years. Now I’m continuously actualising greater consciousness. And boy oh boy, there’s such a taboo on death, or I should say on dead people.

I oftentimes wondered that practically no-one has asked me in these 21 years that my mom isn’t on this planet anymore; ‘What was she like?’ Not to label or define her. Nor to put her in a box. No, it’s just so wonderful to be aware of the light in my own eyes, the minute I am allowed to tell about who she was; how she touched me, what freedom I sensed under her wings, how we sang together, laughed, enjoyed a beer, how she – without any doubt – was and still is my biggest fan. What touched us in the world, how we talked about consciousness and conscious being and her grandma. And her artful heart that she didn’t really unfold in her life and the way she was – truly was. And how she loved my dad and how he loved her. Wauw I am one of the lucky ones who has parents who taught me the greatest lesson in life: be who you are and everything will always turn out fine.

That’s why I keep on following what I know.

With her death – most people talk more about, then celebrating her and her life – I got intensely aware of the absence of farewell. Sure, we did prepare ourselves. She was ill for 9 months until her coming death. We cried, laughed, talked, kept silent, let go of each other – totally. And there and then by letting go of each other, more connection appeared. After her death she was still around until the very minute I am writing this. I communicate with her (yes, I see, hear and perceive dead people). And that’s so so great.

A year later I met the love of my life, I thought. We got married, started a family and after 15 years together (10 years of marriage), it broke. That’s how it seemed. For also there I noticed: there is no separation. It’s just a different way of being together. On a weekly basis I have kids leaving the house and coming home. No farewell – just oneness, continuously. 

That makes speaking on a funeral so special for me. I listen to life-stories, I’m allowed to walk together with a family on their very intense path. I am allowed to celebrate someone’s life with them; someone they still love.

Let’s call out the names of those we let go of, let’s keep on finding out who they were; those people we let go of and whom we are one with continuously and who contributed to us being us.

Cheers to life, to celebrating life: every hour, every minute, every second – because we can! 

Death doesn’t exist
Nor does farewell