It is with great sorrow that we announce the death of our dearly beloved Emma, daughter of Ivor and Gay, sister of Peter, Jamie and Sophie, and friend of so many.
We pray that her beauty is now shining in that better place where she is at peace and free from her suffering.
We ask for your prayers and messages for Emma.
We are heartbroken and are so very grateful for all the love and support we have received from you all. Thank you.
2nd July 2010
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My deepest sympathies to you all at this time of great sadness and loss.
Emma
Dear Emma
So sad and so sorry you couldn’t find what you needed here and that we could not help you more to find what you needed, here on earth – but it was obviously so and you clearly felt a much stronger need to go home than to stay here.
Love you and sending you so much love on your way and knowing that now you will find the healing and love that you are seeking.
Dear one, I miss you and the missing of you is like a great ache that reminds me of all that is missing and all that we are longing for in our hearts and in our souls, the knowing and connection and love that we all know exists and that we all need and seek. I feel your loss and somehow I also feel inspired because the missing will show me the way, will teach me what I need to know. And I feel your courage and determination to find that which you know to be there for you and for all of us.
Dear Emma you have been a very good friend for many years, we also met in Atsitsa and in that special place made friends with a lovely group of people and you were the one who brought us together and suggested that we could meet back in England and we did have many fruitful and beautiful meetings as a group and I always loved your gentle way of leading a group and making suggestions leading us all to share our hearts and ideas and creativity.
Then over the years you came and visited me and my growing family and became good friends with Drum and the children, we always enjoyed your visits first in Wales and then in Devon when we moved here, you often came to spend some time with us all as a family, and played with the children, sharing chats and jokes with Seren as she grew up and delighting in meeting little Joel our latest addition to the family.
So many lovely memories and so much missing and wishing you well my love, so very well. I will talk to you often I know.
With so much love to you and to all your family and friends who are all missing you and loving you so very much, and sorry I shall be away for the ceremony on Dartmoor which I would have loved to be there for, love to you Jamie and hugs and many thanks
marianne xxx
I met Emma when she came to the Abbey to run arts based workshops with a group. Over the years I met her many times and found her a lovely person. When she came to live at the Abbey I got to know her better. She came with me on a Panto trip with a group of adults with learning difficulties and was very popular with them and with my granddaughter who was also with us.
I qm so sorry that she had to leave us but hope that she will find the peace she deserves.
Emma….do you remember starting out on a journey?
Not only the physical one… flying over land and sea, the long coach journey to one of the edges of the Greek mainland and a boat to the beautiful isle of Skyros where I first met you 19 years ago.
My first memory of you is of sitting cross legged at Athens airport whilst we waited for luggage and transport for the next leg of the oh so long journey to Atsitsa. Though we may have groaned at the length of time it took us to reach Skyros and to return home again that journey also gave us the time and space to step out and away from our day to day ways of living and to enter into a way of being that opened up to the many dimensions of exisitence…some understood, some glimpsed, some to be discovered and some yet to unfold. That first trip in June 1991 was an amazing, life changing exploration of individual and community living together.
And we took a piece of the Atsitsa living into our own lives in London by forming and sharing the Oekos group experience meeting monthly in each others homes, sharing in oh so many ways. The fast pace of life was stilled for a moment each month whilst we purposely paused to reflect and share of ourselves…the joys and successes as well as the fears and doubts. People came and went, babies were born, illnesses survived, deeper awarenesses and mysteries touched, people died…the cycle of life.
For me you always allowed a place for your fragility, for your doubts, for your anxiety, your life long quest that honoured your inner integrity and your life long enquiry of exisitence as we know it and for the ‘otherness’ less easy to explain and define. Your delight and passion and enthusiasm were threaded and weaved together giving a powerful energy and drive for creativity that inspired and touched those who met you.
I felt and feel deeply moved and very sad when I read of your deeply painful struggles these last long months…when you reached out and asked for help feeling lost and fearful. Reading other friends words gives me a sense of your insight and awareness as I would have imagined you to have…with integrity and openness. I am so sad that you suffered so, I am sad for the loss and suffering of those who know and love you in this world and I send and share my care and love to you and all those who grieve your death.
So Emma…I wonder about your current journey and hope you are free and shining!
Goodbye dear Emma
love Jane xxx
Dear Emma,
I’m so sad that you have gone from us, departed this life, so suddenly.
I was very fond of you and admired your wisdom, compassion, innate love of nature and your sense of fun…
I will always remember your response of absolute hilarity when Aljosa – a Croatian artist who lived and worked at the Abbey one summer – drew caricatures of some Abbey staff, and depicted you like a ‘dart of busy-ness’ [the best way I can describe it]. I think it was you that described your picture as ‘super-woman’ and you proudly took it to put up on your wall. I will remember this when I think of you, with a smile.
Hilary
Dear Sophie, Jamie and family,
I am so sorry to hear about your loss. I never had the opportunity living in the States to have met Emma directly; but knowing both Soph and Jamie I know she must also have been a truly marvelous person. I would see Jamie at the gym lately and he would tell me about the difficult time Emma was going through. I believe that she is now renewed, healed and happier than she experienced this present earthly existence. I will keep you all in my prayers and send you all lot of love and support during this time of grief.
All my best to you all,
Woody B.
To Jamie and his family,
You have been in my prayers since Melva shared your news with me. May your time together strengthen you, and may you know that so many are surrounding you with love and care as you mourn your sister’s passing.
Peace to you,
Amy
Dear Emma, I see us playing in the sea in Atsitsa…and then on the South Bank where we met and you became a sparkling part of the Women’s Circle…where you brought such a deep intimacy and an enthusiasm for a greater life…you gave so much and I received much from you…rest gently dear soul as your journey has been tremendous.
My tender thoughts are with your family.
Hazel
Dear Jamie,
You and your family have been much in my thoughts and prayers these past days of loss, grief and waiting. Now you can celebrate her life and wish her farewell. I hopeB you find comfort in remembering, in addition to her long suffering and tragic death, the beautiful daughter, sister, aunt who could capture the beauty of life in poetry and who provided you with so many happy memories. At the memorial service celebrate her life, and through it celebrate life. Emma is now in that perfect place where there is no suffering, only light and perfect peace.
With blessings and sympathy for you and your family,
Eldridge, SSJE
There is no blame
On one of the times I met Emma at the Warneford, before she first attempted to kill herself, she said this to me: ‘If I should kill myself, please know that you have been a wonderful friend to me and that there is nothing you could or should have done.’
I put this private conversation in a public forum because I believe Emma would not want a single one of us to hold on to guilt or shame or blame as a result of her death. She made a choice. A tragic choice that I wish she hadn’t felt she had to make. But it was a choice.
The legacy of her suicide will be different for each one of us as we contemplate, as Adrian writes, the gifts she has given us.
One of the gifts she gave me was her fierce honesty which is connected to the gift I have just written about: her clear understanding that she was making a choice to die and that it was not within the gift of any of us to ‘make better’ or prevent.
When Emma first came to The Abbey I had such a strong sense of someone who was committed to the path of self-enquiry and who would bring such a lot to The Abbey and its then new community. And she did bring so much and even if I had know that she carried within her such seeds of despair, I would still have encouraged her to come. Because what she did, and I didn’t really see it at the time, was to embark on such a journey, such a harrowing of the gates of hell, that I have this feeling now that if we look at it with eyes to see, we can see that she undertook a journey for us all. Few of us have the courage to go where she went although we all carry these seeds of despair in our souls. Few of us really have the courage to look at the darkness where she looked and even if in the end it overwhelmed her and she gave up on life, she has given us all a gift. For me that was the gift of living for a short while with someone who was totally human and although both she and I experienced all the wrong sorts of transferences with each other, and our relationship was sometimes fraught, I think I always saw in Emma something I truly valued. I didn’t see what it was then, but now I do see it as a something like this; that her suffering and her determined walk through the Valley of Fear in some mysterious way was done for me, and for The Abbey, and for us all. Several times she said that she wouldn’t wish this (what she was going through) on anyone, but she did do it for everyone – although I am sure she would not have seen it like this. So I don’t see her death as a tragedy but as something more beautiful than that. It is hard to put into words, but there it is. It is something I will reflect on for a long while I think.
Reading the new posts is a prayer, weaving them together into a love-ly blanket to comfort and hold you. All we threads are woven together into something timeless, fluttering Emma through her expanding dimensions of love even as we wrap the family. Such strange blessing to be a part of.
Dearest Sophie
Emma was so lucky to have you as a sister, and you her. The pain now is unimaginable for those of us who have not been through this, but being here seemed unbearable for Emma. As you know, in Indian philosophy they say that each of us leaves life when our work is done, when we have learnt what we need to learn, some of us learn fast, some of us are very slow. Emma must have been a quick learner. I just hope that you, your parents, and brothers can be together, and tell the stories of Emma, the sweet and funny ones, the ones that will carry you all through, and Emma too.
Love and gentle strength to you all.
Dearest Sophie and family
I are so sorry for your tragic loss. Our hearts go out to you at this difficult time.
You are in our thoughts and prayers.
With love
Naomi, Rosie & Steve
All my love to Emma’s family
Miguel
Jamie,
Please know that as Quakers do, I am holding you and your family in the light during this extremely painful and difficult time.
In love and support,
– Joel
Dearest Soph,
I’m so, so sad to hear the news about Emma and I just wanted you to know that you are all in our thoughts.
What a beautiful poem with such wonderful imagery and emotions.
She will now be at peace and with time, you will find peace yourselves.
With so much love to you all.
S & S xxx
Sweet one, though we know you not
Through your sisters love we can see into your soul
Past the veil of discontent
To the dwelling place of all true beauty in this world
You are pure love & all our hearts are one
Where ever our spirits go
No distant star or universe too far
Love will not forget
Love will not forsake
Love will not repent
Love will not release you from its grasp
You are the blessed child of God
Bridget & Lee
I am truly at a loss for words. Sophie and Jamie, I know how strong you both are, and I know that, with Peter, you will support and guide each other through this tragedy that defies understanding. The loss of such a loving, talented, gifted sister is profound, and I can only imagine the pain and distress you must be experiencing now. Yet I hope you can find comfort in the knowledge that Emma is no longer in pain, no longer alone. She is at peace. I keep her, you and your whole family, in my prayers daily. I know that she really is in a place of perpetual light, and she is finally resting in peace. All love to you, Rachel
dear Emma, I pray for the peace and rest that you deserve. Simone
Emma is not doing this … .
That’s what I keep thinking as I do what I do each day. Emma is not doing this … Emma is not doing this … Emma will never do this again.
Since she fell into crisis early this year I have often thought about a heron I saw on one of my neighbour’s porches. It was a particularly strange sight because I live in London. Out of the corner of my eye as I walked down my street I saw a heron standing on a front step. It was hunched and wet. Its feathers were bedraggled and it shifted from foot to foot. It looked stunned. It stayed close to the side of the porch. It seemed somehow hobbled. It was out of its element.
When I told my mother about the heron she, a country woman unlike me, said that often herons mistake the shining roofs of conservatories, or the shining wet tarmac of roads after the rain, for lakes or rivers. They dive and then they stun themselves on the hard surfaces and, for some time, they are at a loss.
When I walked back down the street a little while later the same day the heron was gone. But the image stayed with me for some time until, eventually, it left my mind’s eye. It returned when Emma fell into crisis.
Emma said to me, on one of the times I saw her at the Warneford, that she had lost her enthusiasm for life. And when I heard the news of her suicide, when I heard how she had decided to die, instantly an image of a bird flying free filled my mind’s eye and all I can hope, as my heart sinks and I think, ‘Emma is not doing this, today,’ is that, at last, she is flying free … no longer hobbled and bedraggled on an alien doorstep.
But I do so miss her.
Jamie,
Marsha and I were saddened to learn of your sister’s sudden death. It appears from reading several of the commendations that Emma possessed many talents and was a vital person in her community.
Words are a small comfort at a time like this, but it may help to know that you have the warm wishes and prayers from all of us in the SSJE community.
Blessings to you and your family.
Dear Sophie and Family
I am so sorry for the pain you must be feeling.
Thinking of you.
Sending you all my deepest symphathies.
Cheri x
PS I offer this poem by Rumi that seems to “fit” my experiences of Emma since she went missing:
“Quietness”
Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into colour.
Do it now.
You’re covered with thick cloud.
Slide out the side. Die,
and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign
that you’ve died.
Your old life was a frantic running
from silence.
The speechless full moon
comes out now.
I met Emma eight or nine years ago at the Institute for Arts in Therapy and Education, where we had both studied. With her typical enthusiasm, Emma had set up and co-facilitated a networking meeting for people using creative arts in areas other than therapy. It was a wonderful example of her warmth, drive, authenticity, structured thinking and very fine facilitation skills, as well as of her passion not just for the creative arts in everyday and in working life, but also for networking and collaborative working. All these qualities meant that she had some wonderful successes in her professional life, despite the challenges she faced, especially when she was self-employed.
Emma introduced me into a group of people developing the use of the creative arts in training and evaluation in the health and education sectors. This was an important step in my own development, but – more importantly – we also went on to become close friends.
In particular, Emma was a significant catalyst for the formation of a group of four of us that we call Creative Companions, and we have met regularly every 4-6 weeks for over seven years. She was key in setting the tone of authenticity, depth and spontaneity in our friendship, creativity, meditation, ritual and sharing together – to a degree that I have not met in any other area of my life outside a therapeutic setting.
When well, Emma was a fantastic, vibrant, inspiring friend from whom I learnt a lot about living the intensely-felt life. I loved her wildness, her passion for the natural world, her free spirit that challenged convention, and her commitment to her spiritual journey. She had a depth of understanding, self-awareness, and acute intelligence that was awe-inspiring. Even when ill – which she described with incredible articulacy and insight – she remained loyal and loving. Sadly her fear and her lack of self-belief was like a tide ebbing and flowing through her life. When she shared her troubles with us late last year, I honestly felt that she was fundamentally stronger in herself than she had been in previous difficult times. How wrong I was.
When she ceremoniously gave us her Medicine Walk poem last year, the oddness of the way she signed it already suggested to me that this was her epitaph – and the poem certainly reads as a wonderful metaphor of her life journey. But I didn’t realise the extent to which she was moving into that realm. My own huge and positive life changes over the last nine months took up my energy so that I lost sight of Emma’s move in the opposite direction. I feel sorry for that now, but I feel she was “leaving” for a long time, and perhaps all of us felt powerless compared with the strength of her illness and intention.
In meditation after the news came that she was missing, I felt that Emma was in a state and a place of incredible bliss and light. I had the most powerful experience in my life of the unconditional love of the universe being wrapped around me by or with her. I also “saw” her beautiful smiling face in a “body” made of veils of wonderful, many-coloured flowers. I strongly believe that Emma is in a far happier place, and – like one of your other well-wishers – that she wants us to know this. Her spirit feels very present and light-filled. Because of these experiences, and knowing her overwhelming fear of life, I feel fundamentally happy for her. However, for myself I of course feel her physical absence with great grief, and we miss her terribly.
Thank you, Emma, for being such a bright spark of light, love, laughter and creative expression in our lives.
I cry for a woman I never met in the flesh. As I meet her in spirit I recognize the Light that heals from within and join her in praying for your comfort and peace.
The richness of God’s gracious love enfold and keep you steady.
in Christ’s peace,
Martha Holden
Dear J’aime,
Kamal and I send our abiding love to you and your family as you commend Emma into a “wild, personal” place filled with fiercer beauty than she has yet known, where she may find returning and rest and holy encounter.
May God sustain you and your family as you learn to love her in a new way.
Prayers surrounding, Jeanne
Dear Jamie,
I feel for you in your sadness as I too pray for the repose of Emma’s body and soul. I also pray that her closeness in spirit and cherished memories may at some time bring peace. With affection, Sam.
So very sad
My heartfelt prayers and best wishes go out to Sophie and her family
Patricia x
Dear Emma,
Our years spent in community at The Abbey were some of the richest of my life. Thank you for your friendship, your warmth, compassion and wild creativity. And for your great courage in sharing all of yourself with us, both light and shadow. It has been a privilege to walk with you a while on your journey. I know the past year has been so very painful, but when I think of you I shall think of you laughing and in love with the earth – lying outstretched on the grass beneath the beech tree, walking by the river, telling tales of Dartmoor and dancing round the village May pole, celebrating the arrival of Spring.
This Gaelic blessing was in a frame by the window in Root – where we shared hopes, challenges, dreams and pudding. Wishing you deep peace at last, now and always:
“Deep peace of the running wave to you
Deep peace of the flowing air to you
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you
Deep peace of the shining stars to you
Deep peace of the gentle night to you
Moon and stars
pour their healing light on you
Deep peace of Spirit
the light of the world
to you”
Bless you Emma, you will always be in my heart. x
Warm regards from Germany,
I didn’t know Emma so well, but I am tearful now and ful of sadness that she isn’t alive anymore. May her new place welcome her and give her peace and happyness.
Beate
Thank you Emma for your hugs, laughter, fierce joy, tears, beautiful company, tender heart and beauty. I has been a joy to have known you and shared in your life. I will miss you. Drum x
One cannot imagine nor words describe your loss. We can only offer our prayers and heart felt sympathy to you and your family Sophie
PaulE
“Rest eternal grant unto her oh Lord and may light perpetual shine upon her.” Sending my sincere condolences to you and to your family Jamie. Our thoughts and prayers travel with you through this difficult week.
Dear Sophie,
I’m so terribly sorry to hear the news about your sister Emma. I just wanted you to know that you are in my thoughts at this difficult time.
With love to you and your family.
Clare x
Sophie,
With heartfelt condolences for your loss of your sister so suddenly and so soon! I cannot pretend that I can even imagine what you and your family are going through.
There are no words that can possibly comfort you, or lessen your sorrow at the passing of Emma and I know that you will all miss her terribly for years to come and that you will hold her close to your hearts forever.
I pray for Emma, and I also pray that you will all find peace knowing that you gave everything you possibly could to make her happy and helped her through her difficult times.
George T.
Emma, I am so sad that your struggle was so hard and I pray that you have found peace. A few of us were gathered today and the story told in your name. May your journey be blessed and your heart song sung in the land that rested you in your walk on this earth.
My thoughts are with you, Jamie, and all your family
With blessings, Sarah
Jamie,
My deepest condolences to you and your family. I can only imagine what you must be feeling and can only offer my wishes and prayers for peace and love.
My heart goes out to you and your family,
Signe
Sophie and family
I’m truly sorry for your loss. Not having adequate words of my own, I’d like to share with you a letter written by Ram Dass to a family who had lost their daughter Rachel. I pray it brings you some comfort.
“Dear Steve and Anita,
Rachel finished her work on earth, and left the stage in a manner that leaves those of us left behind with a cry of agony in our hearts, as the fragile thread of our faith is dealt with so violently. Is anyone strong enough to stay conscious through such teaching as you are receiving? Probably very few. And even they would only have a whisper of equanimity and peace amidst the screaming trumpets of their rage, grief, horror and desolation.
I can’t assuage your pain with any words, nor should I. For your pain is Rachel’s legacy to you. Not that she or I would inflict such pain by choice, but there it is. And it must burn its purifying way to completion. For something in you dies when you bear the unbearable, and it is only in that dark night of the soul that you are prepared to see as God sees, and to love as God loves.
Now is the time to let your grief find expression. No false strength. Now is the time to sit quietly and speak to Rachel, and thank her for being with you these few years, and encourage her to go on with whatever her work is, knowing that you will grow in compassion and wisdom from this experience. In my heart, I know that you and she will meet again and again, and recognize the many ways in which you have known each other. And when you meet you will know, in a flash, what now it is not given to you to know: Why
this had to be the way it was.
Our rational minds can never understand what has happened, but our hearts – if we can keep them open to God – will find their own intuitive way. Rachel came through you to do her work on earth, which includes her manner of
death. Now her soul is free, and the love that you can share with her is invulnerable to the winds of changing time and space. In that deep love, include me.
In love,
Ram Dass”
Sophie, at this stage of life we can expect to lose the generation before us. It should not be that we lose someone so close, so close in age, and so suddenly. Having lost my brother a few years ago, I know this pain, and I pray you and your family take comfort in each other, and in the many close friends who have so eloquently and faithfully come forward here. There are hard days ahead. Lean on each other as much as you can.
Love and strength to you and your family…..
Tom
Dear Emma’s own words in the song of her heart leave a message for those who loved her…..”profoundly nourished, held safe in an embrace of deep contentment…” As Emma is thus held safe, may her dear ones feel that deep contentment.
Blessings and prayers,
Barbara Braver
What a lovely poem and what a lovely soul. “Held safe in an embrace of deep contentment.” Our hearts go out to you and your family Sophie.
Remembering you, Emma, your open heart, hands willing to turn to any task to help, your love of the land, your deep sincerity. You camped with us on our summer camps by Holy Brook on Dartmoor. We will honour you with a ritual in the field when we return this summer. May you be at peace.
Daverick
My condolences to you, Jamie, and to all your family.
Jamie
We are so sorry to hear of Emma’s passing. We hope that she finds peace in heaven and you find peace in memories of her. Our thoughts and prayers are with you at this difficult time.
John and Lynn
Dear Jamie,
I am so sorry to hear this news. My sincere condolences to you and your family, and all Emma’s friends. What a sad loss.
Dear Jamie,
Our deepest condolescences.
Jodi & Bill Wallo
Maggie
Oh Jamie…what beaautiful words, that speak to a beautiful soul. My heart breaks for you and Alexandra. May God hold you in the depths of His heart, comfort and heal you. Your strength and courage inspire. Much love and prayers, Maggie
Whatever transition Emma is making may it be blessed and her soul in a place of peace
“The lamps are many, the light is one” (Rumi). On this Earth, the shape of suffering is very different for different people but we all bathe in the same light.
My thoughts turn to Emma’s family . . . . . . .
Our Sky
it struck me just now
with the force of an imploding star
that on this planet
there is not one mediocre human being
that each has a heart the size of a continent washed
with oceans of swelling tidal feelings
whether we see them or not
that each has a playful child inside and
a playful grandparent, no matter how deeply buried
and while I cannot love them all
they are my brothers and sisters
their eyes laced with naked pain
and its hidden redemption
under the sky,
our sky.
Emma, dear Emma – thank you for the richness of your life, your deep compassion, your electric love of nature and the beauty of your relationship with Her. For your friendship. For our chats. For all that you have given, seen and unseen. I have been blessed to walk a little with you, to have been opened by your suffering and struggle over the last year in ways that mark the journey of your soul as truly incredible. With all my heart I pray that you find peace and rest, and know the love that is there for you. I sit with the little red angel you gave me and I feel your tender warmth and gentle love. God bless you, Emma. Always.