ONE LAST TIME

Sue Gill                         ONE LAST TIME

The last time I saw Lol Coxhill a sax player we had worked with for years in the 1970's and 80's, he was part of The Dedication Orchestra, a mighty jazz band on stage at Kendal Brewery Arts Centre. Despite his track record as an improvising genius, he secretly confessed to us in the interval his fear of getting 'found out' because he was not so good at sight reading a score as some of the other legendary players. His twinkly secret added a delight to the 2nd half. 

We were not to know that this would be the last time we'd see Lol. A few years later, after 8 ghastly months in hospital, he died just before his 80th birthday. We only heard the news of his illness a couple of weeks before his death. We never visited. 

Another legend, Ritsaert Ten Cate, founder of The Mickery in Amsterdam, international elder to the performing arts movement, was given a diagnosis of a terminal illness. The news prompted countless friends, disciples, colleagues to ask his partner if they could see him one last time. 'But you have seen him one last time' was her firm reply. He was clear about how he wished to navigate his last journey. In solitude he made a sculptural shrine/ark, filmed himself reducing it to ashes and posted it on YouTube as his last public artwork. 

What is our impulse when we make these requests for a last visit? To say those things we have never said - how much this person has meant to me, taught me? To share memories? To say goodbye? Or is it rather to calm our own fears of death by seeking comfort from the dying person that we will manage without them? To take inspiration from how they are coping with dying? 

If we do not make it to the deathbed, how do we respond to the news that our friend has died? Guilt usually. Regret? Relief? Surely any half decent friend would want to make one last visit.

The understanding comes all of a sudden. Memories of times together become all the stronger because now they carry the status of the last time, never to be repeated.  In a recent secular funeral I lead, I used an adapted quote from Brian Patten's poem   'So Many Different Lengths of Time' : 

A woman lives for as long as we carry her inside us, 

for as long as we carry the harvest of her dreams,

for as long as we ourselves live,

holding memories in common, a woman lives.  

The question is: how do we make out farewells, or, does the nature of a farewell make us the person we are?  Make us better able to cope the next time the phone rings and our world has shrunk another bit smaller.     

Last times came up in our Rites of Passage Autumn School last month. There, a couple of participants brought to mind personal 'last times' that they only became aware of with hindsight - last time breastfeeding a small daughter who decided of her own accord she was no longer interested, last time reading bedtime stories to children as part of family rituals. A door closes behind us. Intimations of our own mortality. First times come up too, in our enquiry into rites of passage. These are usually much more juicy!