‘Picture a Wave’ from The Good Place, Netflix
(a favourite quote of John’s that he chose to be read as part of his own funeral)
“Picture a wave in the ocean: You can see it, measure it – its height, the way the sunlight refracts when it passes through – and it’s there, you can see it, and you know what it is, it’s a wave. And then it crashes on the shore and it’s gone. But the water is still there. The wave was just a different way for the water to be, for a little while.”
John’s wave has simply now returned to the ocean, where it came from, and where it will always be.
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The majority of the funerals I take are local to me, but I traveled down to Reading last month to lead the service for the much loved husband and son-in-law of friends of mine. John died a few days before his 33rd birthday after a short illness, and his service was a beautiful celebration of the special person he was. So much thought & attention had been put into it by the people who loved him to make sure it was everything he would have wanted, and these words from a programme he loved were a key part of that.
It’s so hard to make sense of the gaping hole someone we love leaves behind when we lose them, and even more so when someone is so young. John found solace in these words himself when he was facing very limited time ahead of him, and I think the images they create are a beautiful way of looking at death and how someone is never truly gone from our world ♡
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[Video taken on Fairbourne beach, Wales, November 2021]
