From Bitter Searching of the Heart
And so it was that I was in Thonon a week after the disappearance of the plane. On my arrival I had listened to the answer machine and heard my bright voice and message to Ronald, welcoming him home, acknowledging our 26th anniversary and saying that I was looking forward to our reconnection in a fortnight and our planned trip to Corsica. Surreal.
I was used to coming back to our apartment and Ronald not being there as this had been a pattern of our life together, but it had been eight months since we had said ‘au revoir’ at Geneva airport (after a chasse lunch in October 2008) and now he was not coming back. This fact had not sunk in yet and his presence hung thickly all around me.
Through a synchronistic process already set in motion some months before, there was to be a ‘house concert’ in our apartment around this time. Despite the fact that I was due to return only on 13 June, Ronald had agreed to host it without me but with Beth’s organisational assistance. Francois le Roux, the talented young South African cellist who goes by the name of the Ha! Man (to do with the creative spontaneity which he exudes), regularly passed through and we had hosted several such events for him. Greatly appreciated by 30 to 40 people from the neighborhood and across the lake and Geneva.
Francois and I had been in communication, and he was going to play a track from my CD Liquid Light, which no one had heard yet (except Ronald as I had sent him a copy, which was later found in his desk and used in production of the audiovisual for his memorial Ceremony for Peace). He would accompany some of my music on his cello, and in this way I would also be ‘present’ at the concert. Francois was willing to continue with this idea, which was now scheduled for 13 June, a fortnight after Ronald’s death.
During these days, there was a tangible, beautiful, creative energy bathing me, holding me, as I delved into Ronald’s archives. There I found fragments of my own life, letters and photographs and memories among the masses of documents neatly catalogued by year. He was clearly a historian as well as a political scientist and peace diplomat. I was selecting photographs and images from his life and work over forty years, which two bright sensitive young women whom he worked with on the Geneva Declaration were compiling into an audio- visual presentation which would be screened on 26th June at the Ceremony for Peace to be held in Ronald’s memory at the HEI on the lake of Geneva.
But on this balmy Saturday, almost fifty people climbed the three flights of stairs up to the apartment for a most special evening. The energy was somehow ‘charged’. There were candles everywhere, all the way up the stairwell, and armfuls of long-stemmed white roses which my sister Bev had brought by boat from Nyon across the lake. There were several large posters of the photograph of Ronald with the sunflowers, which I had taken the year before and now used by the newspaper Le Messager with the story – after a most sensitive and intelligent young man had interviewed me.
Upstairs with the almost 360 degree view of the lake and neighboring 12th Century castle, with the setting sun leaving a golden path on the shimmering surface, there were huge photomontages of our life together since our time in London, as two post-graduate students, through all our adventures in Africa and the Balkans, until very recently. Extraordinary, humorous, poignant and rich images of a very rich life.
And the music was sublime. It was as if every heart in the room was opened and we were all connected to each other and through another dimension to Ronald, whose pensive photograph looked down over the piano where I sat. A neighbor and friend, who was to take over the ‘presidency’ of our neighborhood association Les Amis de Rives after Ronald’s death, took a series of beautiful photographs of this evening, as the last golden sun beams flooded the room and our hearts. He later produced a booklet Calling in the Light pour Ronald , in which I see the faces of Thierry, the street cleaner, Marie-Claude from Air France who quickly became a close friend, Jurgen my boss from twenty years before at the ILO. Many people from Geneva, Iris and John who recorded it all on video!
Mrs Cowley called me in Thonon the next morning from St Francis Health Centre in South Africa, having heard the news from Beth. She had tuned in to me during the heart-opening concert and now asked me ‘what had been going on?’ She saw so much light and love and presence from the higher realms. Now watching the series of videos, which included my playing spontaneously, it is astonishing. One can still feel the energy which graced us all that special evening. I was being held in a transcendent state. This is clear.
***
A fortnight later the Ceremony for Peace was held in Geneva in Ronald’s memory on 26 June 2009. A Ceremony for Peace was what Ronald had requested in lieu of a religious service in the event of his death. It was memorable, with several hundreds of people from diplomatic circles in Geneva’s international community, as well as many colleagues, friends, family and supporters there for me.
I had helped his young colleagues produce an eleven-minute-long presentation composed of a selection of photographs spanning Ronald’s professional life as a peace diplomat. From his first posting as a twenty-something delegate for the International Red Cross in Cyprus, to his final role as coordinator of the Geneva Declaration on the Reduction of Armed Violence for Development, almost forty years later.
The lyrics from the song Villanelle for Our Time, performed by Leonard Cohen, appeared to have been written specifically for the audio-visual.
From Bitter Searching of the Heart[1]
From bitter searching of the heart,
Quickened with passion and with pain
We rise to play a greater part.
This is the faith from which we start:
Men shall know commonwealth again
From bitter searching of the heart.
Leonard Cohen’s gravelly voice rasped out these powerful lyrics for the first half of the slide show as scenes with Ronald in Geneva, Haiti, Namibia, Angola, El Salvador, Mozambique, Bosnia, Kosovo floated across the screen. And then in an almost seamless transition, a track from my CD Liquid Light which they had found in his desk, accompanied the remaining scenes from Ayzerbaijan, Kenya, and the podium of United Nations with the signing of the Geneva Declaration. Impressive.
My contribution was described on the programme as ‘Homage in words and music’. I remember standing at the podium, closing my eyes and starting to speak to Ronald, feeling an intimate communication between us. I felt he was right beside me. The recording of my spontaneous outpouring reflects this energy and is poignant and powerful. Then after some fifteen minutes of gentle speaking I moved across to the piano, which the organisers had hired for the ceremony. Whatever I had not been able to put into words and express aloud, then flowed out as music, passionate and deeply moving for me and everyone present. The music came through for Ronald. I could feel his presence and sensed his love and appreciation for the whole event.
I came to a stop and breathed. The silence and energy in the huge room overlooking Lake Geneva was incredible. It was thick, almost dense. I opened my eyes and looked at the sea of well-meaning faces, some visibly moved. I recognised a group from the Air France office. I looked up at the screen at Ronald’s photograph with the sunflowers, which I had taken the year before and his favorite quote from James Thurber, which he shared with everyone, everywhere, whenever a situation presented itself.
Look back not in anger, nor forward in fear. But, around, in awareness.
I felt myself smile. Yes, cher Ronald. You have indeed left a legacy.
We used to joke about la petite immortalité, but your life was a life well lived. And very importantly, to your immense credit, you never became a cynic.
You did exactly what you intended with not too many compromises along the way. And in me you found a willing and complicit, if challenging, partner for a significant part of this journey of yours. Our paths were beginning to lead us in different directions, as we had recently acknowledged. But I believe we were both determined to find a creative way of moving forward, preserving the preciousness of our shared experiences and treasured complicity.
Dying in a plane crash off the coast of Brazil on 1 June 2009, was not only dramatic, it was hugely symbolic. It was our 26th wedding anniversary.
About to turn fifty-nine two months later, you were right in the middle of your second Saturn Return and I was entering mine. Talk about life-transforming experiences. Nothing about you, or me, or our lives can ever be described as ‘ordinary’.
Thank you, Ronald … for helping to keep us out of mediocrity. And through the bitter searching of our hearts, reminding me to find my own inner melody.
[1] The lyrics were written by Frank Scott (1899-1985), a Canadian poet and constitutional expert, who helped found the first Canadian Social Democratic Party. Ronald would have appreciated this link.