“When I die, I have asked for the song Into the West to be played – the song that the girl sings at the end of the Lord of the Rings film.
The words guide us ‘lay down your sweet and weary head. You have come to journey’s end. The ships have come to carry you home.’ I think its message is ‘go quietly and do not fear.’
I love this image of moving on. This is how I see death, not as final but moving to another place. We do have to move on – we’d feel so bored and fed up if we stayed here for 300 years.
When I told my friend about my health problems the other day, she said to me, ‘You’re 92 - your intestines are 92. No wonder they don’t always work well!”
From the very first day we’re born, we have to die. We should give death the same love and attention we give birth. We come into the world and we leave. It would make things easier if we knew when this would be, but though this doesn’t happen we still can plan in advance.
I would like to use my death to help other people through their feelings of being terrified of dying. My approach will be to tell everyone I will miss them because I have passed away to another world.
Leaving people and missing people is awful.
I know this because I have lost a son and a daughter.
Leaving people and missing people is awful. I know this because I have lost a son and a daughter. Yet the process of death is a gentle one, the process of moving on. We must stop thinking about it as something terrible.
I want the people who love me to celebrate me as they see me and as they want to celebrate me. Once I go it’s not my celebration, it’s theirs, though I will always be where they are.
At my funeral I will leave a message of love to everyone here, and to animals and plants around us. I would like the words of the Desiderata to be spoken, ‘Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.’
We all need to spend time sitting by a river with frogs jumping around; to see a little ladybird on our hand and to watch the beauty of these creatures. Loving, sincere love is the only thing that will change this earth.
Every bit of life is wonderful if it develops and grows into something that is wonderful still.”