Reflections and Recollections
told at the
Service of Remembrance
for Emma Coats
22nd July 2010
Emma as a Young Girl
By Jane Aitken
Emma in Greece & England
By Angela Young
Emma at the Abbey
By Brad Strachan
Emma in the Desert
By Stephen Bushell
Emma is the Butterfly
By Jamie Coats
Emma as a Young Girl
By Jane Aitken
I was moved, I felt honoured, to have been asked to say a few words about Emma as a young girl. Thinking back to the mid-1960s, to remember her has given me not only sadness, but pleasure, bitter-sweet pleasures as I remembered many happy times.
Emma often came to stay with us in the country, with or without her family from when she was about six, until she went to boarding school. To me, as a grown-up, she was the perfect guest – she was quiet, ate whatever was on her plate, was never homesick, nor did she whine that she was bored with a plaintive “but there’s nothing to do” – of course there was a lot of giggling and whispering. We called her my fourth daughter – Alex my older daughter was obviously my first daughter, her sister Tona my second daughter, Alex’s best friend my third daughter and Emma, the same age as Tona was my fourth daughter.
When she first stayed, she said that she was not a “country girl” and didn’t like exploring the Common with us. She said that she missed the London pavements – with her adult affection for and appreciation of Dartmoor, she obviously out grew her “cityness.”
I remember her happy and barefooted, dancing, leaping and twirling across our lawn and then doing scary-looking acrobats on the climbing frame.
Their favourite TV programmes were Blue Peter and Belle & Sebastian. Blue Peter was full of ideas for crafts and games and fun things to make – like spiders, using a nutshell with drinking straws, to painted and decorated jars and boxes often covered with coloured Kleenex Roses, made with small used boxes, yogurt pots etc. Emma loved making things; she was enthusiastic, imaginative, and dexterous with nimble fingers and intense concentration.
I don’t think Emma liked our dogs as much as she liked the TV Bernese [I think] mountain dog, Belle, her favourites of our many animals were Oscar and Grunt, the guinea pigs. My daughters each had a pony, Emma didn’t ride but would help them groom, clean the tack, shovel the stalls etc. Then sit on the fence to watch them, sometimes shivering in the cold! She and Tona built a fat snowman and dressed him in a school scarf and hat!
One summer Alex, Tona and I stayed with the Coats at Bainbridge, on the Isle of White. It was a happy holiday, spent mostly on the beach building sandcastles. The nanny at that time could peel an apple round and round so the skin came off in one long curly piece. I think that Emma was the only one who eventually could do it too – slowly, carefully and with great determination.
One day we all went to watch a costumed parade on Bembridge’s High Street (Main Street). The outfits were colourful and fun, the children were very excited. An “Ogre,” with green face, cloak and long green-nailed hands, growled at the children and pretended to grab at them, Tona burst into tears and hid behind me, Alex tried to calm her. Emma, to our surprise and admiration, stepped forward, waved her arms, made a face and said “Boo” loudly to the Ogre – it as surprised as we were! None of us has forgotten it, and how impressed we were with Emma’s spirited defiance.
Our happy holiday and visits from Emma ended when she and Tona went off to different boarding schools, and then we moved to Toronto. Emma will always be in my mind’s eye and heart as my happy, twirling and dancing fourth daughter.
~~~~~
Emma in Greece & England
By Angela Young
Emma leapt into my life in May, 1995, in Atsitsa on Skyros in the Aegean.
Atsitsa is a magical place where we learnt to wind-surf and dance and practise yoga; where we sang and we talked; where we wrote and made art and, every morning, small oikos groups met. Oikos means house or home, and it was in these home groups that we said what was troubling us, or what had given us joy … and I made a friend for life.
In the afternoon of the day we arrived we were told, ‘Emma will join us tomorrow. She’s an old friend of Atsitsa’s.’
I’d never been anywhere like Atsitsa before and I didn’t know whether I would like it, or be liked. But the next day, when I went to change some pounds into drachma, I stood behind a woman with a brilliant red scarf tied round her waist. Somehow I knew it was Emma. When I asked her, she turned a bronzed smiling face to me and said, ‘Yes. I am. Who are you?’
And so our friendship began. We made art from nature and Emma’s delight in the natural world and her enthusiasm for making art from stones and seaweed, flowers and leaves, pieces of wood or bird’s feathers, amazed and delighted me. I’d never met anyone like her before.
Emma was instrumental in forming a group that continued the friendships forged at Atsitsa. We called ourselves the Wild Women (from Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ book, Women who Run with the Wolves). We met several times a year for weekends of self-discovery and laughter, until September 2000. Angie Titchen is also here, but Carol and MaryAnne are on holiday, although I know they’re here in spirit because Emma’s spirit is here.
Whenever Emma and I met we explored every subject and every emotion under the sun. We often ate noodles after an exhibition Emma had read about, or a movie directed by someone only she had heard of. It was always a discovery. She often said she longed for another way to participate at exhibitions other than just looking. And then, in 2007, she found a piece of work after her own heart. We went to Antony Gormley’s Blind Light at the Hayward: a huge perspex box filled with fog that you walked into. Inside the box you couldn’t see a thing. It took courage not to keep one hand on the perspex wall for safety. We called to each other and challenged each other to let go of the wall and walk into the middle. I doubt if I’d ever have done it without Emma.
And of course we talked (and laughed) about what it all meant afterwards.
Emma worked with art to facilitate change in organisations, chiefly the NHS. The feedback from her workshops was always positive, but it is difficult for an artist to promote herself in the business world and she couldn’t find enough of that kind of work to make a living. But I know those she worked with will never forget her.
And even though Emma never found a way to earn a living through the arts, a deep love of the arts was at her very core. She drew, painted and wrote to explain herself to herself as we’ve all read in her beautiful poem Song of My Heart, Call of the Land. And what I learnt about myself through my friendship with Emma and our mutual love and constant exploration of the arts will never leave me.
I write fiction and she often suggested that instead of wearing three hairshirts and agonising at my computer over a piece of work, I should go for a walk or make time to dream. She said what I needed for a story would always come that way. And, of course, it always does.
She was a beautiful catalyst.
She was a great friend.
She still is.
~~~~~
Emma at the Abbey
By Brad Strachan
So this is a letter from me to Emma
The time we first met ……
You were designing an open day for the Abbey……. Designed, structured, engaged dancers, planned the layout of stalls and exhibitions etc. Meticulous in detail and able to make changes as the weather didn’t quite play ball. You made the whole day work…… Then in the evening as we all relaxed you were pleased with what you’d designed, and a little coy in accepting the praise you deserved. anxious about had you forgotten anything…… Smiling, pleased, relieved, joyous in success. Dancing, light, thanking of everyone for their part, pleased at the praise. Already planning what could be better next time. It was a ‘fun’ evening. There may have been a glass or two of wine involved I remember.
You brought the strengths that created all of that into the Abbey community when you came to live here….. and carried on using your skills. You brought also, so much more – yourself………
Laughing, caring, crying, annoyance at the pace of things, anger at times, always authenticity. I remember you not wanting to be seen as the policeman of health and safety in the Abbey. Always articulate, enjoying poetry and literature, and gradually making more space for this as you settled in here. Enjoying the people and conversation. And sometimes it felt to much. I know that feeling. Your expressions of joy at meeting up with friends from London and from Braziers. Time spent in making of rituals for yourself , [I’ve never been good at recognising and marking moving’s on and changes] your sense and feeling and attachment to nature and the earth. And particularly important your honouring of, and recognition of the sacred Feminine in all of us.
The unfolding of you and moving on of your story is what you were able to bring here in this place. In this community.………….
At times you saw us as a family working well together supporting each other growing, at times seeing us as a family and wondering if we were just dysfunctional.
And most of all I remember how you ‘settled’ into this place and with that came a growing sense of happiness and belonging.
At times you were so pleased to get away and so surprised that you were then pleased and happy to return.
Thank you for things you have done here and most of all for being you in the doing.
You are and will remain my friend.
~~~~~
Emma in the Desert
By Stephen Bushell
I am humbled to be invited to offer some words in this service remembering Emma. First of all I would like to convey my heartfelt sympathy to Emma’s family and friends as you each begin to find your way without Emma. I know that sympathy is shared too by my nursing and medical colleagues at the Warneford hospital who, like me, were shattered by Emma’s death.
I have probably known Emma for the least time than anyone else here today. I knew her for the last months of her life when she was a patient at the Warneford. I met Emma in my capacity as one of the hospital chaplains where my task is essentially to accompany people in their journey through crisis, breakdown, illness – whatever labeling we use for those times in our lives when meaning collapses and purpose seems futile. We aim to journey in attentive openness to signs of the re-emergence of meaning and try to make sense of times that hold little hope of sense; when that journey comes to a sudden and abrupt end the process of making sense goes on for a long time afterwards.
When I met Emma I felt she was in the desert; a place empty and arid, where the horizon is so far to reach. She was in that place that has captured many spiritual seekers down the ages. In the 4th century hundreds of men and women left towns and cities in the near east and went to live solitary lives in the deserts. Their reports to us – found in their writings – teach us (amongst other things) that the desert is as much a condition of the human heart as it is an outer reality.
With hindsight I can see how the sacred thread of life had run its course and had brought Emma to this harsh place of extreme separation. I must add though that even in this arid place Emma remained intensely grateful for all the contact she had with family and friends. When last week Emma’s brother Jamie showed me a photograph of Emma from last summer, taken by a friend on a walk along the Sussex downs I felt some sense of why, perhaps, Emma had chosen to leave this life in the way she did. The photograph shows Emma walking confidently along the coast path – the wide open sea against the chalk cliffs.
The sea, in our deepest evolutionary memory is the birthplace of all life; in the book of Genesis the Spirit of God moves over the face of the waters awaiting the creative word of God to fill the sea with a multitude of life. In the gospels, Christ walks on the water and stills the storm-whipped sea: a sign of the renewal of all creation. And in Greek mythology the sea is the birthplace of the goddess of love, Aphrodite. For reasons that can at best be speculation, Emma’s ultimate renewal is beyond this life: symbolised by that place where earth meets sea; the place brooding with the creative renewal of God was where Emma chose to enter into her journey of ultimate renewal. A journey into the eternal love and embrace of God who will bring Emma to that further shore whose waves of love break upon the arid interiors of our own lives and where – within that love – you who have loved Emma will always remain connected with her.
~~~~~
Emma is the Butterfly
By Jamie Coats
Emma is in the light. Emma was brave. Emma prays for us. Emma asks our help to create a church of light. Emma is the Butterfly.
Emma’s room at the Abbey was adorned with many images of the Madonna and Child, including one of herself with her new born niece Clara, taken last summer.
When I took Emma out of the Warneford Hospital in March she asked to go to a church and we went to St Mary Magdalen’s and she prayed to Mary, the Mother of God, and told me afterwards she prayed for me too.
When Emma was taken from the John Radcliffe Hospital Trauma Unit back to the Warneford, she was terrified and in her wheel chair she prayed the Hail Mary.
Her last words in her note book were “Help me goddess Mary, help me Mary, to call my soul forth, help me, HELP.”
So I have prayed to Mary to try to say some words.
Emma is in the light.
While Emma was at the John Radcliffe I had a vision of Mary which I told Emma about:
I was swimming in the river of life itself, it was stormy and turbulent. Then I realized next to me, held two feet under water was my sister, Emma, held by two bonds, one male, one female to a stone at the bottom of the river. Mary, the Mother of God appeared on the bank of the river, and began to wade in. With something unseen she cut the bonds and lifted Emma and carried her to shore on the edge of the river of life and stood her upright. For a long moment I thought Emma was dead. Total fear and anxiety gripped me. Then Mary breathed into Emma, and she choked alive. Emma still was bound around with ropes, Mary began to peel these cords and I saw Emma writhe in agony, the bonds had cut so deep.
When Emma went missing I saw Mary cradling her dead body in her arms. I knew then that when the binding ropes had been cut Emma’s body had fallen apart. I knew that Mary had lifted Emma completely out of the river of life.
When I prayed for words for today Mary said, “Assure them Emma is in God’s peace, she was in total agony, she is absorbed into me and you may say, “Hail Mary … blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Emma.” There is no sacrilege in that, whatever old patriarchs of dust might think.”
Emma is in the light. Emma was brave.
When I met Emma at the Trauma Unit she said looking down, “I am damned, you must be so disappointed in me, angry.” Somehow I scanned my body, not a trace of anger, not a trace of disappointment did I find. Emma had called me forth to love like I never had before. I said, “Emma, I love you, nothing has changed I have but one regret, that as your brother I have not expressed my love more clearly and firmly before, but I say it now “I love you, you are beautiful.”” It was hard to connect. Then I said to Emma, “Jesus, as he died on the cross said, “Eli Eli lama sabachthani?”, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”” and she looked up, we connected and she said, “I understand.” She had become his female counter part on the cross.
Emma’s pain from what she called, her “wounded roots,” was so great but she had a brave determination to stop the pain, to name the pain and on no account pass it on. She refused to have children, she was worried she’d hurt them. She could say quite hurtful things and did to some of you. When murderous thoughts arose she went into hospital to be held. She did not want to hurt. As she became more dependent she was traveling back in time to a place of pain that our individual love could not solve. When pain is in the roots, it is underground. You cannot pull up the roots to save. Only universal love can reach that deep. Do not blame yourselves. You could not have done more; you loved her as best you could.
Inside Emma was a last remaining strength of adult anger at the agony at the root of her life. With that final strength she figured out how to walk away from institutions, family, and friends, in order to carry away the anger and to take it into light, to ensure its end. She stepped off a white cliff into universal love.
And Mary said, “Emma handed me the ax of anger she feared she’d use on others, with it I cut the bonds of pain that held Emma under, I called her soul forth into my love. She was brave enough to step into my arms. She is held in total love for this sacrificial act.”
Emma is in the light. Emma was brave. Emma prays for us.
Emma wrote amid her despair recently, “I honour and bless, my father, my brothers and sister, my friends, the hospital, all who give me support and I bless Mary.” Long lists of blessings fill pages of her Warneford art-book. She prayed for us.
There is pain of generations and as historians will tell you continuity of pain is often stronger than any change that brings new life. Emma worked to stop this continuity of pain through the generations. She was always “Opening doors on creativity.” In her words “I specialize in creative approaches to continuing organizational change.”
Mary said, “Emma saw my son Jesus as her brother in life. She was like him, a confrontational non-violent rebel against a system that holds people in pain. She shared his compassion.”
Emma’s journey asks us to forgive our parents, our grandparents, and great grandparents and so on and let in God; God as our father and mother in our lives or “the creative spirit” as she would say – a spirit that can the stop the mindless continuity of pain and allows new birth to happen. In her poem Emma said, “She is entranced, fascinated by the powers of imagination and life.”
That strength of Emma’s final act has pierced my heart, as I am sure it has yours. I experience Emma’s prayer for me and her final act as a lance piercing a boil of anger deep in my heart that had made me perpetuate the pain that I received and pass it on. With the boil burst I now better hear Emma’s profound prayers of compassion for us, she did not blame us, she celebrated the beauty of life, and she calls us to see that beauty in all of us.
Emma is in the light. Emma was brave. Emma prays for us. Emma asks our help to create a church of light.
Mary son’s body went missing. God knows what happened to Jesus’ body. Whatever happened, whatever you believe, the apostles did the right thing. They spread out, they said that love is more important than pain and they did not just tell it to their blood brothers and sisters, they told it to their adopted family and to strangers, to people in foreign lands. As we searched for Emma we started to do the same all the way to telling strangers via the media, and fliers to businesses all over Oxford.
A friend asked me on day seven of the search, “How do you keep it up?” “Church” was the word that entered my mind. Emma was not a church-goer, she saw a church where patriarchs had hidden abuse, denied women power, wounded the roots of the very church itself. In her life work and through her radiant beauty Emma called for new forms of church and today as we are gathered here we that church of light Emma asks us to create.
We will dance in this church with joy, for sister Emma, a Christ figure for me and I hope for all of you. We have to forgive ourselves, honour Emma’s agony and the pure joy of creativity that she called forth, and let us feel it in the rhythm of the song that my brother has chosen to celebrate her life.
And Mary said, “Go, sisters and brothers of the sister in my womb, go tell the story that must be told and let it touch the hearts of all throughout the world.”
Emma is in the light. Emma was brave. Emma prays for us. Emma asks our help to create a church of light. Emma is the butterfly.
The butterfly, an early Christian symbol of the resurrection, was Emma’s symbol. It featured strongly in her work to bring in Emma’s words “resources to awaken creative working.” A painting by herself of a butterfly was the treasured image she had at the Warneford.
Recently I found myself in prayer for Emma in a Monastery chapel that is dedicated to Mary and this is what came to me:
There is a wasp, called an ichneumon wasp that lays its eggs in the caterpillar of a butterfly. The caterpillar in time turns into a chrysalis and begins its metamorphosis. You can see in the chrysalis a fully formed butterfly. Something hatches within and eats the butterfly alive from inside. A wasp appears intent on destroying more lives.
I am certain that the butterfly in the chrysalis has a choice. It can struggle mightily inside and if it knows the wasp is winning it can make itself die and with it the wasp so that no more butterflies will be hurt.
Emma has a beauty inside which we all deeply love. Never have I experienced such love support as I have from all of you, friends of Emma. What a circle of loving-life she brings about.
Emma is the butterfly, especially for every woman whose beauty of her soul has been denied.
I will forever honour her struggle against the wasp, stopping its cycle of life, and for being the butterfly who reminds each of us that we are as beautiful as flowers and in our darkest heart is the love-giving nectar of life.
Alleluia, Emma is love, Emma is courage, Emma is compassion, Emma is family, Emma is risen. Alleluia.
Emma is in the light. Emma was brave. Emma prays for us. Emma asks our help to create a church of light. Emma is the butterfly.
Halleluiah!
Messages for Emma 