Address and Closing Comments

T WAS A privilege to you, Robert, to be able to share those thoughts with us. It is the tie which binds you together, and through the rest of your earthly journey you’ll have that companionship. That’s why I read those few words. And I’m sure that you will be supported. You can talk to her. I know from experience the realities of that which is unseen and those of us that have sometimes been very near to death and know what is beyond all this.

How that same relationship — you’ll always have it with the spirit of Hazel that you loved — only it was the human form that we saw, with which we are familiar, from a human aspect. Which we take it from conception from the moment of birth in which take this human form, of the spirit which came into this space of love, as we know.

May God bless you, Robert, and your family and those that are near to Hazel and friends at this time.

(The children place roses on the coffin.)

The red rose. A rose, bespeckled with dew, with fragrance not its own. I always think about that with a rose. We may have all the perfumes, the best in the world, from Paris and all over, but the perfume of nature and creation, “a fragrance not its own” — it is devine.

The moment has come when we have to prepare to let go. I therefore commit to the purifying elements the earthly apparel of the loved one, Hazel. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. But the spirit abideth Thee, O God, and the earth prepares.

Eternal light! Eternal light!

How pure the soul must be,

When, placed within Thy searching sight,

It shrinks not, yet with calm delight

Can live and look on Thee.

Drop Thy still dews of quietness,

Till all our strivings cease.

Take from our souls the strain and stress,

And let our ordered lives confess

The beauty of Thy peace.

(— J.G. WHITTIER, Dear Lord & Father of Mankind)

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, O God, we surrender this earthly husk. Amen.

And now may the peace and the blessing of the God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit rest, remain, and abide with you all this day and forever more until we meet again. Amen.

Turn your eyes towards the light and the shadows will fall behind you. Go in peace. God be with you. Bless you.

— The Reverend Frederick Lambert Carter