Frog

Frog died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 69 on 5 January this year. Today would have been his seventieth birthday.

When I first met him 44 years ago I knew that we’d been together in previous lives. All I can hope for now is that we will meet again and be together in a life or lives to come.

We had his cremation last week and Mark Gilborson, the Civil Celebrant, found this poem for me and read it out at the service. It is one of my lifebelts.

 

Death is nothing at all

 
Death is nothing at all.
I have only slipped away to the next room.
I am I and you are you.
Whatever we were to each other,
That, we are still.
 
Call me by my old familiar name.
Speak to me in the easy way
which you have always used.
Put no difference in your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.
 
Laugh as we always laughed
at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Let my name be ever the household word
that it always was.
Let it be spoken without effect.
Without a trace of a shadow in it.
 
Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same as it ever was;
There is unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind
Because I am out of sight?
 
I am waiting for you, for an interval,
Somewhere very near, just around the corner.
 
All is well.
 
                    Henry Scott-Holland (1847-1918)

Frog at one of his favourites jobs:
clearing the drains in the road below the house so that it didn't flood

Frog in his den (a semi-underground music room)