| Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here today… |
| I have chosen those opening words deliberately for those were the very words that brought together a congregation, not unlike this one, in this very cathedral forty years ago. And that was on the happier occasion when Theo and his beloved wife Mira came together here at this altar, to be joined in holy matrimony as man and wife, with their numerous friends as witnesses. |
| Today, forty years later, we - belonging to another generation of their friends - have gathered here before the same altar to witness another of their family occasions - Theo's leave-taking of Mira, of his family and of his countless friends. |
| Theo himself came from a small family. He was an only son and had a much older sister. That would explain perhaps why Theo regarded everyone he came across, no matter whatever his or her age, as a sibling, as part of his extended family. |
| Throughout his long professional career, there was no one who did not know Theo, and in reciprocation there was no one whom Theo did not want to know. From the time he joined government service in 1941 until his retirement fifty years later, he remained a popular figure - depended upon by his superiors, trusted by his colleagues, and admired by his subordinates. |
| Theo's work as an Irrigation Engineer brought him close to nature - to the sun, to the earth and to water. These elements he has now left behind him, for us. |
| We who are left, how shall we look again |
| Happily on the sun or feel the rain |
| Without remembering how they who went, |
| And ungrudgingly spent their lives for us, |
| Loved, too, the sun and rain. |
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[EXTRACT. The full text has been published in THE BARK OF A PEN.]
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