my dear friend sean clement died on may 26, 2001, after a 16-month-long battle with brain cancer. just after his death, i wrote this story, which was published in the seeker journal.

sean clement was always one of the most amazingly gentle men i'd ever known. a big teddy-bear of a man. i met sean in the winter of 1994, while i was working with his new girlfriend, belinda, a homebirth midwife. i was struck right away by how kind and gentle he was. sean was exceptionally honest, caring, and always thinking of how he could make another person comfortable.

my relationship with sean and belinda grew over the years, and we saw each other through many changes. our sons became best friends. i was the maid of honor at their handfasting, summer solstice 1996. i cheered when sean graduated from the university of oklahoma, and celebrated when he was hired as a programmer. i wept and waved goodbye as they rolled won the highway for a new job and life in oregon. i wept and waved them back home again nine months later. i rushed to their side when belinda's mother was killed in a car accident a few weeks later. i laughed through tears as sean caught their beautiful baby daughter just two months after that. they were there for me when i lost pregnancy after pregnancy. they were there for me through a polyamorous relationship that nearly cost me my marriage. we kept at&t in business for two years while my husband's job took us from state to state. theirs was the first number i dialed after my second son was born into his daddy's hands two years ago. theirs was the first number i dialed when my husband waked out the door five months ago.

sixteen months ago i was sitting in my kitchen in my little apartment in kansas when the phone rang. it was another friend, and i knew it must be bad news when she said, "maka, are you sitting down?" i lied, "yes, what's wrong?" "they found out what's causing sean's headaches. [earlier in the day, the doctor had said it was probably migraines.] he has a brain tumor." i crumpled to the floor and let out a wail. this could not be true, not of sean. it was the first of many times i would think this same thing. two surgeries, six weeks of radiation, some chemotherapy, and seven months later, we got another call: "guess what? the mri was clean! no more active tumor growth!" while we knew there was a strong possibility of recurrence, we chose not to believe it would happen, but instead to focus on the good times we were having with sean. he was able to work from home, continuing to support his family but also getting to spend much more time with them.

on february 28th, 2001, sean and belinda signed papers closing on their dream home. the hosue was so perfect for them, and they were very excited. sean had been having some minor symptoms, and was scheduled for a routine mri in march anyway. within a month of closing on the house, we knew that sean's tumor had recurred, was mostly inaccessible, and was definitely not survivable. by that point he had lost most of his ability to speak and was paralyzed on the right side. surgery was performed on april 19th, where most of the largest tumor was removed in the hopes of giving him a better quality of life and possibly a longer survival. he was in the hospital for four weeks before coming home to hospice care.

sean lived at home for the last two weeks of his life. belinda cared for him every day, with the help of his mother (a hospice nurse herself), some friends, and the hospice staff. there were many touching moments, many sad moments, and many hilariously funny moments as we all went through those last weeks.

on saturday morning, may 26, belinda called me at around 9:30 and said, "maka, i think this is it. he is staring and unresponsive, he doesn't know who i am." we had felt, the night before, that we might be near the end because he went through a pretty violent purging process...belinda ended up calling the hospice nurse out at around midnight to help her deal with it. still, it was very difficult to think that we might already be there...and at the same time, perhaps a bit comforting to know that his journey was nearly over without as much suffering as we knew he could have had. i told her, "i'm on my way, be there within the hour," and got my kids dressed and out the door.

when i arrived, sean's father and one of his brothers were at the house; they hadn't yet reached his mother. his stepmother had taken their almost-four-year-old daughter, kayleigh, to a family picnic (being memorial day weekend). sean was in a coma. the nurse arrived and we talked about how long it might be; perhaps as long as 1-2 days, most likely only a few hours. she ordered a suctioning machine and an oxygen machine to make him more comfortable. i went to the computer and sent out an email to everyone who might like to come and visit him once more, and started calling his friends, family, fraternity brothers, members of our pagan community, and everyone else we could think of.

we spent the day with people coming in and out of the house, standing near his hospital bed in the living room, gathering in the back yard, hugging, talking, laughing, crying. people brought food. a member of our community brought his voudon mambo, who blessed sean and lit a candle for him. (it was observed later that this candle burned out at the same time as he died.) we played his favorite music. a good friend took the children swimming for several hours. her husband, who lived nearby and was one of sean's best friends, stood at the end of sean's bed for those same several hours, as if he were sean's sentinel, guarding his way through the doorway. sean's mother sat by his side from the moment she arrived, barely ever moving away. she tended to his needs, monitored his vital signs, etc. the day flowed in and out in a peaceful way.

in the mid-afternoon about a dozen of the pagan folk who had gathered at the house slipped out into the back yard and around a corner where we were less obvious to those inside the house. we felt that sean and his mother were both holding on to one another, unable to let go. so we cast a circle, creating the womb of the great mother within the center, and placed there those things that needed to be released. we asked that the cord binding sean to his mother be gently severed so that he could move on. we opened a doorway to summerland in the west and left it open for sean's journey.

not too long afterward, sean's mother got up from her chair and went outside to the front yard. belinda sat down where she had been and began to talk to sean, telling him it was okay to let go, that she and the kids, and his parents and brothers, would be well taken care of and would be all right. we read an irish blessing to him.

may the road rise to meet you,
may the wind be always at your back,
may the sun shine warm on your face,
and rains fall soft upon your fields,
and until we meet again,
may god hold you in the hollow of his hand.

then we blessed him with a simple "last rites" type blessing.

may the air carry your spirit gently,
may the fire release your soul.
may the water wash you clean of pain and suffering and sorrow,
may the earth receive you.
may the wheel turn again and bring you to rebirth.

i wish someone had taken a picture, though of course at the time it wouldn't have seemed appropriate, of belinda sitting beside his bed with her forehead pressed to his, her nose touching his, her lips millimeters from his, eyes closed, whispering, "let go, my love, let go. it's okay, it's time. let go." she stayed with him like that for a while...i'm not sure how long. at one point while she was there i got very shaky and upset and had to go outside and find a quiet corner in which to cry.

belinda got up and came outside and within a few minutes his mother was knocking on the window. we came back inside to witness his last breaths, and he was gone. sean, born on 5/2/69, died at 5:26pm on 5/26/01. somehow that seems significant to many people. belinda threw herself onto his body, crying and wailing. after a few moments she drew away from him and sort of collapsed. the women held her up and helped her walk to their bedroom, then sat on and around the bed as she lay there crying and screaming and wailing and moaning out her sorry. meanwhile, sean's mother cleaned him up and the hospice nurse was called to come and confirm his death. the children returned within about half an hour.

earlier in the day we had begun telling people that we would have a rite at sunset. in the intervening hours, his parents and brother left, and various community members and friends came and left. more food arrived, and we began preparing for the ritual. it was very unplanned; we had just the vaguest idea of what we wanted to do. by sunset, the house was full of people. there were at least two dozen adults present, plus children. we had covered sean with his familiar green blanket that he always slept under, and placed his favorite drum between his feet on the bed. we formed a circle around the living room. two friends moved around the room, smudging everyone and purifying the space. belinda cast the circle and called the quarters. she then bathed sean from toes to head while a minister friend, anna, read a beautiful rite, i believe from "the pagan book of death and dying." i wish i had the words to share with you, as it was really lovely. the belinda gave sean the "five-fold kiss," which was very poignant, as i'd seen them share this rite at their handfasting and at other rituals as well. sean's body was then surrounded by blossoms cut from several beautiful spring bouquets that someone had purchased earlier. then belinda read the poem "funeral blues" by w.h. auden...

stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone.
prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
silence the pianos and with muffled drum
bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
scribbling in the sky the message he is dead,
put crépe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

he was my north, my south, my east and west,
my working week and my sunday rest,
my noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
i thought that love would last forever; i was wrong.

the stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.
pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
for nothing now can ever come to any good.

someone else released the quarters and opened the circle. we drummed and danced, laughed and cried, drank and smoked, listened to his music, told his stories and his jokes...basically had a good old pagan irish wake. it's what sean wanted, and it's what he got.

just before midnight, the cremation society staff arrived. they went over some paperwork with belinda. we removed the flowers and blanket, and the drum, from sean's bed, leaving two red roses on his breast, to be cremated with him. he was taken out of the house. some of us walked out into the yard as they were pulling away in their van, and realized that they'd gone the wrong direction to leave, driving into a street that has no outlet. we laughed about sean having one last tour of the neighborhood, and we all stood on the lawn and waited for them to come back by, waving a bit hysterically as sean played his last joke.

people began to leave, though many stayed far into the night. these wonderful friends have continued to be present for belinda almost daily for two weeks. sean's memorial service was held one week after his death, on saturday, june 2nd. we played several hours of his favorite music, people got up and talked about him and told his jokes, and belinda read the "funeral blues" poem again. we had a table set up with some of his sacred and favorite objects on it, surrounding a laptop computer playing a slide show of photos of him from his infancy until the day before his last surgery. we ate a potluck meal, visited for hours, and just drummed and danced him back to the wheel.

this was, without a doubt, one of the most moving experiences of my life. belinda and i have been struck, over and over again, by how much like a birth sean's death was, and how we feel so strongly that, like birth, death belongs at home among those we love. we hope that sean's passing will influence the pagan community, both locally and elsewhere...not only in how we deal with death, but perhaps also in how we deal with life.

i hope that by sharing sean's story with you, i have touched your soul in a special way, and that you can take something from his story and use it within your own life.

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