I sat a little apart from the other watchers, and prayed--not now that she should live--life seemed too small a thing to pray for, but that our souls should be illumined to see the meaning of death. Another flash of lightning, and I saw that there is no such thing as death. Death is a misunderstanding of the mind. The body does not die, for the body has never lived; the body is matter, and inert. Life is a force, and forces do not die. The body is the habitation of the life-force, but the quitting by the life-force of the body, is not death. Nothing has died, since nothing has ceased to live. The life-force cannot die, or it would not be a life-force. The body cannot die--it has never lived; yes, yes--death is a misnomer. The word death, together with the sister words, sunrise and sunset, all perpetuate ancient ignorance. The sun does not rise, the sun does not set, and--the body does not die. Why then talk of death as though it were an ending? It is a transference of life-force from the seen to the unseen. As soon as matter begins to disintegrate, the life-force passes on--that's all. I understood.
In the early morning, as a gust of wind swept through the tent--her tent--the life-force passed; in our stupid, misleading, blundering language, Mrs. Dearmer--mother, wife, poet, artist, dramatist, and last, but not least, camp orderly--was dead. But I knew that the life-force had carried with it all that was real; it had taken to the Beyond Land the idea, the logos, the norm, the soul, of which the body that was left, was only a graven image.
Again a public funeral, but this time--a graceful compliment by Dr. Dearmer--the service was to be conducted by the priests of the Greek Church, officiating in their own cathedral. A chapel in which to lay her, with altar, was improvised in the doctors' reading tent, and was filled with wreaths and crosses of beautiful flowers, sent by friends and sympathisers.
The military attachés, medical and military officials, public representatives, members of other units, and general sympathisers, assembled at the chapel tent at 5 p.m. Four priests, with long hair and gorgeously embroidered robes, three of blue and one of red, said preliminary prayers round the altar. Strange that when men symbolise religion they adopt the garb of women?