There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it.Īnd he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.Īnd you’ll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith indeed, they should not have faith. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.Īnd at one point you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you.Īnd as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.Īnd the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. ![]() You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again! One brief moment and all will be as it was before. I am but waiting for you, for an interval, ![]() Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? What is this death but a negligible accident? There is absolute and unbroken continuity. Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together. ![]() Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. I have only slipped away into the next room.Īnd the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. However, he was very well known by the family for never taking the easy route for anything so it was pretty specific to him. It took a bit of practice to get the flow right but it worked really well. At my grandad's funeral I chose The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |