Portrait Poem

Spoken at the Memorial Service for Emma Coats 22 July 2010

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!