I went to the funeral
of a mentor and friend exactly half a century after we met.
At the airport I
recalled moments of our working together around the world. The vast
communication we maintained about the arts, sharing our writings, paintings and
sculpture. We published scientific works together and for decades taught two
generations of public health students.
The last year of his
life he did not recall who I was.
… While waiting for
my flight back, I recalled the lines from T.S Elliot in “East Coker” about
waiting without hope. I had read these lines before when faced with the dilemma
of acceptance. And in the stillness of my await in an airport where all around
me were eager to return to homes and the familiar scent of a warm bed were
their siren song, I thought about all that I had found in waiting. Even though
I was an explorer, carrying my body over continents or when, in the stillness
of moments, letting my mind take flight.
But I have always
engaged with the moment, and often engaged the moment in the process of
waiting. Now, I found T.S Elliot’s “East Coker” perfect for my returning from
a funeral.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not
matter
We must be still and
still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a
deeper communion
Through the dark cold
and empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wing
cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise.
In my end is my beginning.
… It was at this
moment of reflection when a woman sat in front of me, took her phone out of her
bag and in a prostrate position stared at her phone for a long while. In await.
For a message to come through. Perhaps for a promise or an apology.
And the last lines
from the “East Coker” took on a whole new reality.
“I said to my soul, be
still and wait without hope
For hope would be hope
for the wrong thing;
wait without love,
For love would be love
of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love are all in the
waiting.
Wait without thought,
for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be
the light, and the stillness the dancing.”
August 10, 2025
©Vahé A. Kazandjian,
2025
