Concluding Remarks

Thank you all.

Before we conclude, let me say again that you are welcome to come back to our house, and there are some little maps, suggesting where to park, on the table with the condolence book.

The condolence book is currently unbound pages. Please take one of the sheaves of paper and a book for support and find a quiet place to write, if you would like to do that.

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I took Margaret to a doctor’s appointment on 27 June, in Sydney, with nasty MR scans and a knowledge in our hearts that trouble was upon us. Margaret went straight to hospital and never came home again.

She remained a pleasure and a wonder to care for through harrowing days.

I would leave her alone in a hospital bed at night and in the morning find that she had been reading or had listened to hours and hours of a weighty book on cassette tape.

Six days before she died, long after a nurse in Sydney had said to me: “You know, she’s part of our family now, we love Margaret”,

two days before she lapsed into somnolence,

there she was

- doped with morphine to cope with her softened, worn and fractured spine, telling the physiotherapists, with her limited speech capacity, that she wanted them back in the afternoon to take another walk.

Such courage…

But, most astonishing to me, was to come in and find, day after day, at the top of the things on her table, this set of affirmations, which she used while meditating at night.

Catherine will read the affirmations to us as Margaret is lowered into the grave.

These are not magical words handed down on stone tablets. They are plain things to seek to be in life, to which she aspired, to the last.

We invite you to listen in wonder when Catherine reads them, and also to be inspired to apply them, each to ourselves, in our own lives. They are not expressed as desires, but as affirmations of what one would be. Let our hearts soar at such positive notions.

Thank you, my love.

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Copies will be at the condolence table or at home.

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Catherine – your turn to speak.

Catherine reads:

I am happy, I have good fortune, I am cheerful.

I am humble, tolerant and modest.

I am clean and good, I am worthy of being loved.

I am content, I am tranquil.

I am secure, I have faith and confidence in the future.

My heart is full of loving forgiveness.

I am jumping with joy.

I am in harmony, I am at peace.

My sexual energies are balanced. I am sexually assured.

I renounce the past, I am generous and relaxed.

I am buoyed up and elated with hope. I am light and buoyant.

I am reaching out with love.

Charmian [White Lady Funerals] will then take a flower to Mary for Mary to throw into the grave. Dennis and family and others take flower from baskets and follow suit.

End of proceedings.