"There are many of us who simply will never consider for one moment their own demise. They refuse to discuss the issue and even ignore how they will leave this world, buried or cremated, where the service will be conducted and the Order of Service. I know that for many years, one could have placed me in this category.
When someone mentioned it one day and pointed out that I was being selfish in not taking care of such arrangements in advance of my death, I had to agree that to place the burden solely on the shoulders of another at a time of grief and uncertainty was clearly wrong and wholly unnecessary.
When I die, I will be cremated and have already decided that my ashes will be divided into three parts and spread among the people and places I loved best in this world. One-third will be spread on my parents grave in Heckmondwike, West Yorkshire, one third on the family grave of my Irish grandparents in Portlaw, County Waterford where I was born and the final third at a site on the Haworth Moor where Sheila arranged a bench to be installed in memory of her first husband and where our dearly departed dog, Lady's ashes rest. Place my remains on the moorland where each flower will be a wilting sun.
When my walking mobility was better, I would often sit on that bench and look across the valley in reflective thought. I know that the thoughts of those we have loved never leave us. They live on in our heart and cast their radiant light onto our every shadow. Softly the leaves of memory fall as our loving thoughts of good times past gently gathers and cherishes them all.
Within the past month, Mum Elizabeth died and was cremated. Yesterday we collected her ashes from the funeral parlour and today, Sheila, her brother, Winston and myself will scatter them on the road where we often pushed Mum Elizabeth when we took her for a walk to escape her nursing home. She always insisted when we came to Sladen Reservoir in the valley that she stop by the wall to look upon her 'Sea of Galilee', as she called it in her state of growing dementia.
To Mum Elizabeth's mind, the image of the water before her was a holy place where in the stillness of death, hope is allowed to see a new-born star and listening love can hear the flutter of an angel's wings flying overhead.
This afternoon when we scatter Mum Elizabeth's ashes in 'The Sea of Galilee', we shall remember that to live on in the hearts and lives we leave behind is not to die badly. Believe me, Mum Elizabeth, you will live on in our hearts and know that were I able, I would walk right up to heaven and bring you home to us again; I would!" William Forde: July 2nd, 2017.