Robert Fripp - A Blessing Of Tears
    1995 Soundscapes - Volume II - Live in California

In Memoriam:

Gladys Louise Green Edith Fripp Elizabeth Bennett Irene
Miller Estelle Gavelas

Life is what we are given, living is what we do with it, and
then we die. Probably nothing gives life its keenness and
poignancy as the presence of death and dying.

The death of one's mother is about close to home as we get,
but the death of friendship and trust remind us of the
richness which both give to life and our living of it.

There are different qualities of dying. The quality of our
dying reflects the quality of our living, the quality of our
living determines the quality of our dying.

May my living honour my parents.
May my living honour my family and friends.
May my living repay the debt of my existence.

Tuesday 28th. March, 1995

San Jose Seminario, GANDARA, Buenos Aires Province,
Argentina.

Basis of Eulogy for Eddie Fripp delivered at Wimborne
Minster on July 30th. 1993 during the service to celebrate
her life and commemorate her death.

My dear little Mother slipped  gently from this life Thursday
evening the 22nd. of July between 9.07 and 9.10 while I
was holding her hand, just three months short of her 79th.
birthday.

Twelve hours later her heart was still warm.

She was born on October 14th. 1914 in Abertillery with a
twin brother  who died an hour after birth. For this reason,
being a twin, her temperature was always lower than
normal.

Edie spent the first 17 years of her life in Aberbeeg, a Welsh
mining village in what is now the county of Gwent. When
she was 17, having never be christened, she organised
her own christening and took the name of Edith, the name
given to her by her parents. She never liked the name Edith
and often mentioned to me that if she had had more sense
she would have called herself by another name.

Her home was in a terrace of houses built by her
grandfather and his eight sons for themselves and their
families. This was Greenland Terrace. One of the sons was
killed during the construction when a wall fell on him.

The centre of village life in this Welsh mining community
was the chapel where Edie's talents for singing, elocution
and social interaction were encouraged and practised. This
Chapel background may also have been the origin of her
anti-clericalism. Barney Hopkinson (the officiating
minister of her funeral) is the only man of the cloth for
whom she ever felt affection and respect, and who might
have lead her to regular church-going. Otherwise, she said
that she felt closer to God in Poole Harbour or
Bournemouth Bay while fishing on my father's boat. Or at
least, this was what she told a visiting evangelising former
vicar of Wimborne Minster when he called.

Edie's father, Joe Green, was pigeon racing champion of
Wales for three consecutive years with his blue checker
pigeon "Lily of the Valley". Joe lost a leg in a mining
accident, and in the following week as Joe hovered
between life and death my grandmother's hair turned
white. He died in 1948 at the age of 59 from angina, a
result of his occupation. My mother was very close to her
father, a connection maintained throughout her life, and
always considered a visiting pigeon to be an omen of good
fortune.

A I left my home to attend Edie's funeral service a pigeon
rose from a cable and flew above me.

Gladys Louise Green, nee Lewis, Edie's mother, remained in
Wales to marry Joe following the early death of her mother
and the subsequent emigration to Australia of all her
family. Nanna Green was proud that her children Evelyn
and Edith never had to attend the soup kitchens of the
Welsh mining communities in the hard times of the 1920s.
Nans died at age 95 in 1985, outliving my father by several
months. I visited her with my cousin Malcolm a month
before she died. Although her mind and memory had
mostly gone, she recounted in living detail the night on
which her husband, Granky Joe Green, had died. His last
words, spoken in the morning to a friend, were "Take care of
Glad". She told this story as if she were speaking of the
previous night. In actuality the event had been 35 years
before. Neither death nor a widowhood of 35 years
affected the love and loyalty which my grandmother held
for husband. Her last words, spoken to my cousin Jean,
were: "I've said my prayers and I'm ready to go".

Edie left Aberbeeg around 1930 because her only other
choice was to marry a miner. She came to Bournemouth at
a time when job applications bore notices: "No Irish, No
Welsh". I never myself knew my mother to discriminate
between people whatever their background or
circumstances. At a dance during the war, following the
influx of American GIs, my mother was reproved by a white
GI for dancing with a black GI. My mother's response was
that both were fighting to support England. And then she
went off to dance with another black GI.

During the war my mother worked in Bournemouth,
initially in the Records Office. Her earnings as a civilian
were substantially more than enlisted workers and these
earnings, saved by mother, established my father in
business with the acquisition of a properly in Leigh Road,
Wimborne, then No. 75 and now No. 14. At the rear of the
property was a Spiritualist Temple which in time became a
dance hall and eventually an auction room, somewhat to
the disgust of Mr. Jenner the spiritualist minister.

Then, in 1945 my sister was born and ! year 1 month 2 days
12 1/2 hours later, so was I. My mother had had no wish to
be a mother, but once motherhood arrived she gave her
family her life.

So, my mother was an energetic, social creature who gave
herself to her children and husband while smartly dressed
in bright clothes and often wearing large, pendulous
earrings. She accepted my father's anti-social nature,
which was in marked contra-distinction to her own social
inclinations, and supported her children in whatever way
was needed and possible. This included visiting infant
school plays and carol singing in Broadstone which my
father managed to avoid without difficulty.

On Christmas Eve 1957, after she had already bought all my
Christmas presents, Mother spent the day shopping with me
in Bournemouth and bought me my first guitar.
Subsequently, she took me to Westbourne for guitar
lessons with Don Strike nearly every week for two years. My
father encouraged my practising by paying for the lessons.

My father was who he was, and I sensed his children were
something of an interruption in a life which otherwise
might have been quieter. I think he found us continually
surprising and not quite part of the world which he
understood.

But my Mother learnt from her children. My sister became
the person she is because of my mother, and my mother
became the person she was because of who my sister
became. Mother was also pretty zingy, and had no sense of
direction at all - a talent practised over a period of 38 years
driving in all directions including the one which lead
to where she was going. She loved James Bond movies,
particularly when Bond punched out the baddies, and was
becoming educated in high action Jean Claude van Damme
movies the week before she died.

Mother was an unrepentant smoker, although smoking
undoubtedly contributed to the cancer which killed her.
The Friday before she died and upon her return home from
Wimborne Hospital she celebrated with some fierce toking
of her 100mm stogies, the packet of which bore the clearly
displayed banner: "Smoking is bad for your health". She
commented to me how good it tasted after a smokeless
week in Victoria Hospital. To acknowledge, her last
pleasure, we put in her coffin a packet of her favourite
cigarettes contributed by Rosemary, her neighbour at
Millstream Close, in the hope that wherever Mother is now
or shortly going to there will be a smoking section. We also
placed in her hand a pink rose from the garden of our home
in the Wiltshire countryside, the much loved garden created
by Cecil Beaton.

Four years ago, following the death of my spiritual
mother Mrs. Elizabeth Bennett, and reflecting upon the
death of this my second mother, I came to appreciate the
utter necessity of death.

In an obvious sense, life and death are reverse sides of
the same coin. Without life there cannot be death, and
without death life lacks its imperative. Death, in this
view, is an inevitability.

But death is far more then a mere inevitability: it makes a
contribution to life which enables life to continue. At the
completion of a life lived well, something of what has been
acquired is returned to life and living things.

Our contemporary culture seems to be the only culture in
history which doubts that an individual consciousness,
concentrated within one particular life, is an ongoing and
continuous action contained within the growing overall
human consciousness.

For my part, I have no fear that my Mother's death has
ended very much at all, but perhaps provided her the
opportunity to trade in an old vehicle for a speedier model.
Although given my Mother's total lack of direction,
practised to a near art-form over a lifetime of hair-raising
achievements, that might be a legitimate cause for
concern.

Me mother gave me her unqualified love and support,
without which the difficulties of the music industry,
particularly the very hard early years of constant travelling
and pressure, would have been overwhelming for me. I wish
to acknowledge publicly and gratefully that my mother's
unconditional love has been the foundation of my life.

There is only one father in the world, there is only one
mother in the world, but there are many children.

I have not lost my mother, but I miss her company.


Postscript:

Following the service on Friday 30th. July 1993, I rode with
my Mother in the hearse, such was her sense of direction, to
Witchampton Churchyard where she was placed with my
Father in the plot which had been prepared for them both
since his own burial on April 19th. 1985. The Fripp family
has been living in the village for some 300 years and on
May 16th. 1986 my marriage to Toyah took place in the
church which now both my parents look down upon.



//Entered by Andrew Porokhnyak from CD booklet 14-Feb-2005