My friend Renate was buried yesterday in a biodegradable urn beneath a tree in the middle of the forest. There must have been well over a hundred people there, perhaps a hundred and fifty, although nobody had been told about it and it had not been announced in any newspapers.
Many people cried, even the men, but I did not cry at all until the minister said the bit with "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" and even then I only cried a little bit because I realized that that really was Renate inside that urn and she really was going a very long way down into the earth, where the biodegradable urn would eventually disintegrate and she would become one with nature.
We stood in a very large circle for about an hour, while the minister, who was a lady, spoke about Renate and read verses from the Bible. Next to her was a small shrine with a large picture of Renate, some flowers and the urn. Then many of Renate's friends of the last few years read out their favorite memories of Renate, and described her character. And some of the children played music, and her brother-in-law played two pieces (I think of his own) on the guitar.
While we were standing in the circle, I watched two shiny beetles scuttling over the wood shavings that covered the ground. They were so busy and so purposeful and I thought, I wonder if one of them is Renate? Is Renate now a beetle? And then the sun fell in a certain way through the trees and caught the dust in the air, and just at that moment a butterfly flew into that beam of light and I thought, is that maybe Renate?
Renate was a unique person and a talented painter, dancer and artist in general. She was also very spiritual and esoteric, and believed in all kinds of magic, healing and non-earthly matters that more down-to-earth people found hard to relate to. In fact, in the end, this did not seem to help her but had the opposite effect. She gave up her chemotherapy, which had been helping her greatly, and took to relying on more spiritual and natural healing.
Renate and I were inseparable friends when we were young, we met when we were 25. We stayed inseparable for 12 years. Then suddenly Renate ended the friendship. It hurt very much and I didn't understand what had happened or why. But I stayed good friends with her sister and her sister's family. When Renate became really ill, she moved to her sister's house and her sister took care of her. And six months ago, her sister broke off the friendship with me, after 26 years.
Unlike me, Renate was not close to any of the friends we had both had in our 20's and 30's. So all of us, 8 of the old guard in all, went to the funeral together yesterday and clung close by each other. Afterwards, we went to an inn and had some food and drinks and laughed and joked and had fun and comforted each other.
What I realized yesterday was that really everybody dies. Every single one of us is going to be confronted with this one day. Some people go earlier than others. We are all shocked and surprised when someone close to us does leave us, but it should not come as a shock or surprise at all. Never in the history of mankind was there were one person who just kept on living.
We spend so much time worrying about things when we are alive, concerning ourselves with all our earthly problems, when in fact what we should be doing is making the time here matter. We should be making the most of the time allotted to us, because we don't know when it will end. We should make a positive, good impression in this world, so that we will remain in people's memories and thus live on.
Although I was hurt by Renate's rejection of me so many years ago, my memories of her are the ones of when we were younger, during those 12 years when we were inseparable, and with that she will live in my memory for ever and I will always love her. And clearly, she touched many people in a similar way over the various stages of her life. If even one-tenth of the number of people that were present at her funeral yesterday come to say goodbye to me when it is my time, I will have achieved much.
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