To Rest

BY LINDA CORNISH, LONDON, ENGLAND
18th July 2005

In a quiet corner of a Canterbury churchyard Tony was buried today. It was perfect, English summer weather and Simon, Andrea and I were witnesses to the Green Funeral we had decided on and for which Simon had made all the arrangements.

The hand woven bamboo casket he had chosen for Tony’s body, with a bunch of garden flowers on top, was beautiful in its simplicity.

Also present were four pall bearers – two lots of Goldberg and McCann but not at all ‘Pinteresque’ or sinister, I thought. As I seemed unable to ‘still’ my mind, I decided instead to try to remember some of the myriad thoughts that were racing through it; our marriage ceremony – also ‘Family Only’ - with the addition of two school and one actress friend who had stylishly brought - in a Harrods bag - rice to throw at the newlyweds. Plays we’d worked on together along with some of the ‘telling’ notes he directed my way. These often turned out to be about Real Life as well as Plays – “Fearless, not reckless” sprang to mind. The birth of Simon which Tony couldn’t attend as he was ‘……in the Studio.' This became the mantra in response to anyone, in any circumstance who happened to ask where Tony was – “Oh,” Simon and I would reply, “He’s in the Studio”.

He lived to work – it was his greatest pleasure and he was at his happiest when the opportunity arose to combine Doing with Teaching which, he said is “only valid if Learning is also taking place”.

Friends, places, discoveries, jokes, visits to the theatre, cinema - these and many other thoughts tumbled around as we watched the bamboo box being lowered into the earth and then it was time for me to read, as Simon had requested, some poetry.

THE THISTLE - LAURENCE BINYON

In a patch of baked earth

At the crumbled cliff’s brink

Where the parching of August

Has cracked a long chink,



Against the blue void

Of still sea and sky

Stands single a thistle

Tall, tarnished and dry



Frayed leaves, spotted brown,

Head hoary and torn,

Was ever a weed

Upon earth so forlorn,

So solemnly gazed on

By the sun in his sheen

That prints in long shadow

Its raggedness lean?



From the sky comes no laughter,

From earth not a moan.

Erect stands the thistle,

Its seeds abroad blown.


EVERYONE SANG - SIEGFRIED SASSOON

Everyone suddenly burst out singing

And I was filled with such delight

As prisoned birds must find in freedom,

Winging wildly across the white

Orchards and dark green fields; on – on – and out of sight.



Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted

And beauty came like the setting sun;

My heart was shaken with tears and horror

Drifted away…… O, but every one

Was a bird and the song was wordless,

The singing will never be done.


We stood in silence for two or three minutes and then walked slowly and silently back to the car where we sat for a while and nibbled on some cookies that Andrea had made; as my Mother used to say when she travelled more than ten miles from home and packed in her purse a hard boiled egg, a banana and four squares of chocolate, “You never know, do you?”

We drove to a pretty English village with an eighteenth century country Inn where we had lunch and a bottle of Pinot Grigio (“always acceptable” said Tony – see Jeremy Wang-Iverson’s posting on the web-site )

As you can all imagine, I’m sure, Simon’s loving and generous support of me has touched me greatly as has Andrea’s.

I’ll tell you all a secret now – you’ll never believe it but ……I’m the sort of Mother who tended to think that no young woman was going to be really good enough for her ‘little boy’. In fact I love my daughter-in-law enormously and applaud Simon’s choice and proposal and Andrea’s acceptance.

Here, it’s now 2.30am the next day and I want to write this down so you can all have an idea of how I experienced Tony’s funeral.