Some of you will remember that more or less one year ago, in September 2008, I asked you to think about my friend Toria and give her the energy to fight, as she was very, very ill. I think I told you that she had CF = Cystic Fribrosis, and she was told she´d live till the age of 16 (after getting through the heavy problems and complications at birth).
She was 23 years old when she died on 22nd September last year. She was really someone with an incredible strength and she had unbelievable courage throughout her whole life, even the very last few days. She was married for 5 years, 6?, got divorced, had a new relationship for 2? years, and a marvellous 8-month old baby at that time, Edward...So many things for someone so young...but you can bet she lived her life to its absolute fullest.
She was a lovely person indeed, surrounded by love everywhere, and she always enjoyed her life despite everything...I would like to leave you with the eulogy that her sister Shellie wrote for her funeral. I think that´s really something worth reading...I would take my time, print it, and read it, because...it´s a wonderful story:
THINGS TO SAY AT TORIA´S FUNERAL (by Shellie Crossland)
So, how to talk about my little sister. Where to begin in talking to you about all of the amazing things that she managed to accomplish in her life. Well, perhaps I should start with a concept that was important to Toria after she read a book (the geeks out there I’m sure will know it):
In this book there is a concept of a person who is a speaker for the dead. After someone has died the speaker for the dead tells the truth of their life. Impartially, unflinchingly and entirely, they come and speak the existence of the person to account for all they were and to heal those left behind.
This stunningly beautiful concept was something that she really wanted to do for everyone, she wanted you all to see that she became enough and that no one ever failed her and that you did what you could and that was enough.
Toria believed as do I that it’s not about how great you become, you become enough just by existing and deserve equal recognition alongside everyone else for what you were, both good and bad.
Toria wanted someone to speak for her and though I highly doubt I could be impartial because she was such an inspiration to me, I will give it a go.
So, where did it all begin? Well with Toria the beginning and the end of her always came back to Cystic Fibrosis. This is what she was made of. Made for! CF was, some may think, oddly precious to her at times. But I believe it was at the core of her identity, the foundation upon which she was built and ultimately the foundation upon which she would fall. She liked to think of it like a sword through her heart. But then she always had a fascination with swords.
So there she was, She was born special. And she was told rightly by her much loved Steve Hogarth that it is good to be special and that to be special is not easy, and those words are utter truth. To be Toria was not easy. Born with more medical complications than you could shake a stick at, she was rushed away, our parents barely catching a glimpse of her before she was taken off to be treated. They were told that she would likely not survive and were asked what they would like to call her. They had planned to call her Georgina but on the spur of the moment she was called Victoria, Victoria Jane Wemyss Crossland, a name she was forever proud of, a name I believe that defined her. She was a fighter to her very core and as much as her CF was bound in every gene, so was her fighting spirit. She was, in my opinion, ever Victorious and according to this conversation she had with one of her physios, so did she. She said:
“About my pseudomonas. I said it was a shame that it wasn’t sentient, and it was frustrating that it didn’t realise that by killing me, the host off, it would kill itself. It would be better if me and it could come to some sort of terms, you know, spilt the lungs up 50/50 or 60/40 and agree that was that. That way I got a nice long life, and it got a nice comfy colony, so long as it wasn’t greedy we could live alongside and it would all be cool. But no no no, it’s got to have it all. Stupid pseudomonas, ah well if it’s going to be like that, and not agree to terms, I shall take immense satisfaction in taking it down with me hahaha!”
Growing up together we had a fantastic time, playing in our woods, going on vast adventures that we were sure took us away from home for days at a time. Sure that we may never make it back because we had adventured so very far from home. In reality, years later we realised that we were only ever a few hundred yards from the house! Things get so much smaller as you get bigger.
We played Robin Hood and re-enacted the lion the witch and the wardrobe and the never ending story countless times. I loved playing with her when we were children, and was horribly cruel and always made her play the rubbish characters, the goblins, Much, the half-wit from Robin of Sherwood. She did however own some very cool plastic swords and when our parents told us that we were going to have a baby brother, she immediately came out with the immortal line “He’s not playing with my swords”. I think this early fascination with everything magical and mystical shaped her into the person that she became and allowed her to come up with some of the deepest concepts about the Universe that I have had the pleasure to talk with someone about.
So, this is going to sound a little strange but Toria came up with her own version of a religion that involved a dragon and lots of purple energy. But that happened a lot later in one of her many long stays in hospital.
There is one hospital in particular that always had a special place in Toria’s heart, and that was Tadworth. A mansion and some wards deep in the Surrey countryside where she had many adventures, some of which involved having her arm wrapped up in cling film because of the drip in her arm, so that she could go swimming with the other CF children. It was here that Toria really started wanting to help people with her life, where she wanted to help to heal people as the dedicated staff at Tadworth had helped her and the other severely disabled patients there. She founded a respect there for the medical staff and everything that they did for her and her many physios and doctors and nurses over the years, at Tadworth, at the Churchill and then at the Brompton. They meant a lot to her and helped her immensely through all of the hardest points in her life where she felt the most ill and weak and tired. They picked her up when she was down and helped her build herself back up again.
Toria and I had lots of fun playing together and with Alex our little brother (or should I now say not so little brother), though the two of them did fight like cat and dog. Toria hated the fact that she was no longer the baby almost as much as she hated that he was a REAL boy when she was only a tomboy. I think it took Toria quite a long time to grow up and get over this fact before her and Alex became the best of friends. (In fact I think she was about 18!)
Now something that was very important to Toria as well as the rest of the Crossland family is Marillion, their music really is a better way of life. If any of you out there aren’t fans by now, you should be! My other half Simon, calls Marillion Crossland glue, the band and their music have held our family together through heartache and arguments and the general stresses and strains of life. Marillion is also how Toria met Bryan, a love affair that lasted over 7 years and a friendship that will never die. Toria’s wedding to Bryan was one of the most beautiful days I have ever seen, so much love in the room! She wrote so fondly of that day in her diary, of the people there, of the preparation we all did in the morning to dress her up and make her look like a girl, that was the first time she ever wore makeup really and my god did she look beautiful!
Toria had many adventures with Bryan, some of them even in reality, that’s a role-playing joke, including their honeymoon trip to Goa, where Toria convinced herself that she could fit a baby elephant that they met into her suitcase so she could bring him home. In the end she had to settle for getting a dog, her beloved Jake, who she taught the cutest trick I have ever seen a dog do, if you ask him, where are you hurt Jake? He looks up at you, all puppy dog eyes in the truest sense and hands you his paw! Ahhh
Toria loved to study. One of her Tutors once described her as a giant sponge that liked to soak up information and that is definitely true. She loved being at school, especially at Redbourne where there were boys (unlike at Bedford High school where there were only girls), boys that she loved very, very much, you know who you are out there; her best friends in the whole world! At A-level she enjoyed studying philosophy though again I think that was mainly because of the boys in her class, and also geography where she learnt the immortal words from her tutor, Briony “geography is everywhere” I don’t think I have been anywhere with Toria since where she hasn’t uttered those exact words to me, always as if I hadn’t noticed (I did do geography a-level too Tors). After a while of not really being sure what to study, she went on a reflexology course. I think that Toria rapidly decided that reflexology was not enough for her and that she wanted to go on to study something deeper, more entwined with the body and with energy and she dreamed of studying acupuncture. However, her anatomy and physiology lecturer on her reflexology course taught her something important which I will now tell you in her words:
“He taught them about the body. Inadvertently he taught her about the universe. Inadvertently he taught her about herself. The last few bits of CF that she hadn’t understood, she suddenly did. The last few bits about herself she hadn’t understood, she suddenly did.
She accepted a lot of CF into herself then. That is important to her. Her heart ached when she realised finally utterly what CF meant. She had always known it was genetic. Right from when she was little and sat with her mother, with the grey book with the little green fluffy creatures in it, she had understood CF was genetic. Now though in that room of healing she finally understood exactly what that meant. It made her very sad. When she realised just how deeply and utterly inside her CF was. Across every cell. Across every single cell. Every strand of DNA. It gave her a great amount of respect for herself though. A great deal of respect for the fact she was still alive. It gave her strength to know that.
She forgave then. She forgave herself for all the times she hadn’t been well enough. She forgave the doctors and the scientists. Working tucked away in a laboratory somewhere. She forgave them for not having found her cure. Forgiveness is a powerful thing. And in that room she finally forgave herself for it all. That gave her a lot of strength. She holds that very close to her heart. She knows she’s going to need all the strength she can get. At the very end she is going to need it. She can take it. Goddess.”
Toria made a piece of artwork, which this moment inspired, many of you may have seen and if you haven’t you can see it later at the village hall. She came up with the immortal line “bound in every strand, yet I am free”. She was free, she did what she wanted when she wanted and lived life to the full. In doing so, Toria did hurt a few people along the way, something that she decided not to feel guilt for but instead decided to try to learn from her mistakes so that she didn’t make them again. Inevitably she did, as I’m sure we all do but then again, we are all here today so she can’t have been doing it too wrong.
Toria once described herself as follows:
I am a comfortable mix of serious, intelligent, thoughtful and observant, laid alongside confident, funny, caring, sexy, strong and together all wrapped up in this sparkly excitable magical imaginative way of perceiving and understanding everything.
She forgot to mention the ego the size of a planet!
Toria loved a lot of people, a few of them were very special to her. She loved in a specific way; she loved like an English girl, a Crossland girl, the same way she loved her earth and her forest, she loved deeply and entirely, consumingly, untamed and raw and true and too much, and she wouldn’t have had it any other way. And neither would I.
And so on to what took her to meeting the person that she loved more than anything else in the whole world. Toria went off to University and met some of the best friends anyone could hope to have, the famous floor 14! They got up to countless mischiefs and generally had an awesome time, all while Toria was learning her beloved acupuncture. This is where she met Luke, and doing what students do… Eating, sleeping, studying, that sort of thing, a little under nine months down the road, little Edward was born. Now this account cuts out all of the worrying and heartache and more worrying about what having Edward was going to do to Toria’s health and to hers and Luke’s sanity. Luckily it turns out, he is rather a laid back chap like his Daddy, with a killer smile and contagiously bubbly personality, I’m sure everyone will love him as much as they do his Mummy. Toria Loves Edward, by god does she love him and I say love in the present tense because I know that she is watching over him every day. She was such an awesome Mummy, writing blogs about Edward Tedwards many adventures with food and rubber ducks and the like and it shows what great parents Toria and Luke have been together because Edward is such a happy little thing, who is almost always smiling and getting up to some sort of mischief, which sounds a lot like his Mummy to me!
So, Toria’s idea of the universe means that we will never really be without her, she believed that, and I quote;
“We are all part of a story, that has no end, reasons that burn and thingys like fire, so we can do it all over again. We are the magic just flowing from state to state, through all these forms and lives and ‘universes’ learning and becoming richer and richer just because for a while we existed as something.”
She looked at people like this, all you beautiful people she knew. She could take almost any single person and if she thought about them enough, even if on the surface she didn’t like them she could get to a point where she understood where they were coming from and she would get all excited. She saw how special we all are because we are only going to exist once for a short amount of time in the form that we are in, so we all have to make the most of us because we won’t ever get to be together again like this.
And it’s why it didn’t bother her too much that she was going too die. She stayed here as long as she possibly could, learning and soaking up and being a sponge, but it didn’t matter to her that she died in the end because in her words; “she existed, she did funky stuff with magic for a bit, its all good!!”
………………………
Toria wrote the following words, just a few weeks before she died and they are lovely and, I hope, a comfort to all of you here today:
“I am truly happy, I am without doubt the happiest I think I have ever been in my life, despite all the worries and the fears and frustrations there is nothing I would change except my health.
We don't have to like cf, or what it does to us and the people around us. But I feel in the end we have to accept it, and make our peace with what we are. And I have. It’s dark, it’s hard and its scary but at the same time, meh! It’s real life and you just have to get on with it, no point moping about!!!
In the end let's face it I am going to die of cf, there is no escaping or denying what is coming. It's going to be bloody scary and its probably going to hurt a lot. And the only way I have managed to pull myself up and push myself through is by finding a place in myself where I am utterly ok with that.
It's taken me a long time and a lot of heartache to come to a point where I am accepting and comfortable with how I am going to end. And that is no small thing. I know in the deepest part of my heart that whatever I do between now and then is enough. And that by living my life as best I can between now and then is all I can do.
Some people may think that's all very melodramatic. But it is something I must consider in my life. Maybe I'm getting neurotic but I have so little time here and it is so precious to me that I can't afford to waste it for anyone or anything. CF taught me this. Love taught me this. Don’t ever do guilt. Guilt only ever breaks things.
But I know the place where I am is not easy to get to. And I appreciate the fact when it does finally happen I will be dead and I won't be the one left behind hurting.
I need the people who love me to be as cool about what is going to happen as I am. I need them to understand as wholly and deeply as I do that in the end this is what was meant for me. For all it has taken, and for all it has yet to take, cystic fibrosis has made me so much more than I could have been without it. And if I achieve nothing else in my life I can hold my head up at the end and say I didn't fail, and I became everything I needed to become. And I cannot and will not tolerate people around me believing and accepting anything less than that.”
So, Toria was born special and it was good to be special and to be special was not easy but I think she managed! She fought, she fought all her life, through growing up with CF, through her pregnancy with CF and through being a Mummy with CF and like a true Warrior she went down fighting with more honour than most of us could ever dream of possessing. Our brave, brave girl.
After someone has died the speaker for the dead tells the truth of their life. Impartially, unflinchingly and entirely, they come and speak the existence of the person to account for all they were and to heal those left behind. I hope hearing this has helped you to begin to heal as much as writing it has helped me. Toria became enough, she achieved enough, more than we all could ever have imagined and we, her family and friends and teachers, did all that we could for her and it was also enough.
I will leave you with this song that really encompasses how I think we should all feel about Toria leaving us to go on and do bigger and better things. She described this as the soundtrack to the entire contents of her heart and soul. This is Estonia.
ESTONIA (words by S.Hogarth, music by Marillion)
Feeling you shake
Feel your heart break
Thinking if only, if only, if only, if only
And the salt water runs
Through your veins and your bones
Telling you no not this way, not this way, not this way
And you would give anything
Give up everything
Offer your life blood away
For yesterday
No one leaves you
When you live in their heart and mind
And no one dies
They just move to the other side
When we're gone
Watch the world simply carry on
We live on laughing and in no pain
We'll stay and be happy
With those who have loved us today
Finding the answer
It's a human obsession
But you might as well talk to the stones and the trees and the sea
'Cause nobody knows
And so few can see
There's only beauty and caring and truth beyond darkness
No one leaves you
When you live in their heart and mind
And no one dies
They just move to the other side
When we're gone
Watch the world simply carry on
We live on laughing and in no pain
We'll stay and be happy
With those who have loved us today
And we won't understand your grief
Because time is illusion
As this watery world spins around
This timeless sun
Will dry your eyes
And calm your mind
No one leaves you
When you live in their heart and mind
And no one dies
They just move to the other side
When we're gone
Watch the world simply carry on
It's okay, we will stay and be happy
Stay and be happy
With those who have loved us today
