Journey’s End

Well it’s been a tough couple of weeks in my life. My 90 year old father passed away the Sunday before last and I flew to New Zealand to be by his bedside during his last hours. I stayed on with my family and to speak at Dad’s funeral which was a challenge for me as I’m very uncomfortable at public speaking.

We buried Dad in a small, generations old graveyard near our family farm. The name Berridge sits on headstones all around him. There were over 75 mourners at the service which was pretty impressive for a man his age. It was dignified and gentle – just like him.

I spoke about my recollections of my Dad, my brother spoke, one cousin shared some funny stories and another cousin added some facts about his life.  It struck me how different our memories were. We all had our own relationship and understanding of Dad and chose to highlight different aspects of his personality, the bits that were most special to us. The following quote which I found un-attributed in thinkexist.com (http://thinkexist.com/) sums up the wonder of how no two people see a life – their own or that of their loved ones – in the same way.

“Life lives, life dies. Life laughs, life cries. Life gives up and life tries. But life looks different through everyone’s eyes.”

Namaste