What a way to go! What a way to live!

One of Jamaica’s most beloved and talented playwrights, Trevor Rhone, made his transition on Monday.  I was lucky enough to have known him, as he was a man of great wit, humility and elegance.

There is a story around his passing – he went to Bella’s Gate, his childhood home deep in rural Jamaica on Sunday.  His brother reported that quite unusually he allowed the infants at a basic school he had recently set up to be all over him.  He visited his mother’s and aunt’s graves and said “they must be happy and I am too”.  Then he insisted on a meeting about a development project, indicating the land he was giving to it and drawing a sketch right there to indicate what he wanted done.  Monday morning he simply called his brother to say he wasn’t feeling well and was going to the doctor.  By 1:30 that afternoon he was gone.  His transition was as elegant and to the point as his life.  He closed his work, drew the curtain and said “this show has ended”.

There have been the usual condolences and sadness that accompany the passing of a prominent man along with lamentations at the loss.  Yet, I feel no loss nor sadness.  For I muse that death is simply another phase of the eternality of life.  Death is a moment to pause and reflect on the body and substance of a person’s work and achievements in this lifetime.  Trevor’s cousin, my friend Yvonne, who has just completed a book on African Proverbs, chose this Swalihi proverb to share on Tuesday:

A creature isn’t completely created until death

How perfect!  When we understand that death is a completion of our life on this plane, that there is nothing more here, then we will understand how important it is to live each day creating ourselves anew.  We are never complete – there is always more to be and do.   There are always new horizons to explore, worlds to conquer, fears to face and visions to make real.  The sadness we feel when someone as accomplished as Trevor Rhone passes, is the sadness of our own lives.  Have we done enough to really live?  Or are we surviving?  People like Trevor show us what is possible – to dream and to do.  For some of us, this is frightening – for if Trevor can do it, then why can’t we?

Death also brings us face to face with the fact that we will surely die.  We wonder: will we be able to do it as elegantly as Trevor, consciously closing the curtains on this plane with a statement “I am happy too”?

This is the way to die.  But more importantly, it is the way to live.  To greet each day with joy and thanksgiving, and with a sense of knowing that if it is our last on this plane, then we have done our job.  Our mission here has been accomplished – on to better and greater things?