In memory of Thierry Parmentier
I love more and more the moment of my beloved spiritual friends departure. Even though I know that this means I will never see them again, literally for all eternity, in the form in which I knew and cherished them. Their Grace is so immense when they offer me the experience of yet another good death, that nothing moves me more deeply anymore.
It is not primarily because, deep within me, this is my own preparation for my own departure. Nor is it because, rationally speaking, at the age I have reached and with the current structure of my family, births are no longer anticipated, but rather departures. What exists overwhelmingly more deeply within me is a profound Love for the way we leave. Because it is exactly the way we lived.
There, just before the end, and especially at the funeral, I see the essence of the other condensed. While they were still here, my gaze upon their Presence was, to some extent, obscured and incomplete. Perhaps because of the familiarity between us. Perhaps because of the subtle defences of both of us. I want, but I do not always dare, to embrace the Entirety of the other; I weigh within myself with whom, when, and whether I will dare to make the movement.
Yet the essence of each person is always specific and always at the core of their Presence. This is what the Soul longs for, however frightening the process may be. And every good Death, a Death that is precisely the twin face of the Life that has been lived, inspires courage to return once again into Life, more Present than ever.
Because we are never more Present in Life than when we stand before Death.
This Presence of yours, my beloved friend, was what enchanted me also in your death. With diminished physical strength, sitting in your wheelchair, and with an IV hanging above you, like Death himself carrying his scythe, yet you were smiling and dancing. Seated, but not immobilised. With grace and lightness.
In your earthly life, your primary breath was not your lungs, but the movement of your body. Every turn of your wrist, every inclination of your torso, every rhythm of your steps, emanated Presence.
You refused to Be anything other than Yourself. You crossed the space, and I did not see merely a human being before me, but the Protagonist of an Archetypal Myth, narrating the human and the divine.
I did not expect your recorded video message to carry such aesthetic and emotional grace, but this surprise says more about my own Presence than about yours.
Because you never hid your unconventional nature, and you never diminished your courage in order to fit into the company of all the others, who do not move with the same grace, while never excluding us because of the natural distance created by your talent and intelligence.
You always taught us how to look for and hold the Beauty of Life before us, behind us, above and below us, to the right and to the left, and above all, primarily and essentially, within us. You always made this spiritual principle visible and embodied through your body, your voice, and your expressions. And thus you made it so accessible to me. You gifted me a ritual that returns me to myself, centred and joyful.
There was never a single time that I saw you perform this characteristic ritual teaching and my soul did not regain courage, my anxiety did not soften within me, and I did not fall in love once again with your movement.
Because you were not speaking about what you were teaching; you were what you were saying and what you were doing, as happens with everything authentic, which is rooted in the Divine Essence and transmutes it so that other, more unripe human beings may slowly begin to taste it.
I want to leave exactly as you did: Present in Life, Present in Death too, Free to be what I Am, what I Was, and what I Will Always Be. For this, I need to live what I Am. And this is a profound Teaching, for which I thank you for being its Messenger.
A few weeks before you left, I saw your body burning, dissolving, disappearing from this form. The day I learned that this movement had also taken place in your physical body, I saw your form inwardly, exactly as you had been throughout your life, dancing upwards in a constantly ascending spiral movement, going somewhere.
I do not know exactly where.
I wish you, whatever comes next, that you dare to remain unconventional and free.
I will stay a little longer, for as long as is mine to stay. I will remember you intensely on some days and I will be moved, and then I will rise and dance. I will always return to the videos you left us, and instantly I will smile again from ear to ear and I will dance, I will dance, I will dance.
And I will meet other people, and I will add to the generosity of your Presence that I experienced, other moments of human companionship that will make me feel that I am a beautiful, courageous, and beloved human being.
And I will live the Life that will lead me to my own beautiful, Free Death. And I will be grateful to you for giving me such a powerful paradigm, from which I can be inspired and create my own improvisation for my own departure.
And when my time comes, I will say yes to my own final earthly movement.
And I will meet you again there, where all movements return to their beginning.
I embrace you, my beloved friend.
Until we meet again.