I'm looking for something to read at my mother's funeral

[LindorDoubleChoc]

We were not wildly close (she was depressed and then alcoholic for most of my childhood and teens) and then anxious and depressed from the time of the birth of my two children. She was the biggest worry in my life and my phone calls and visits to her could be very draining. There was no fun and very little laughter in our relationship, it was duty duty duty nearly all the way. She leaned on me for emotional support ever since her divorce when I was 10/11.

However, she did love me and always made sure I knew. She was generous and well-meaning, just not much good as a parent.

She was fiercly athiest! There cannot be a hint of religion in her funeral service.

So I'm looking for a non-gushy, hopefully quite short poem I can read out. Maybe something about life/nature/circle of life?

Does anyone have any ideas? Thank you so much!

Did she have any special interests - any favourite books that might have a suitable passage?

I love this by Joyce Grenfell:

"Death (If I should go)"

If I should go before the rest of you
Break not a flower nor inscribe a stone
Nor when I'm gone speak in a Sunday voice
But be the usual selves that I have known

Weep if you must
Parting is Hell
But life goes on
So sing as well.

The Seikilos Epitaph Lyrics
While you live, shine
Have no grief at all,
Life exisits only for a short while
And time demands its toll

MIL was a retired English teacher who gave talks on Shakespeare at her local U3A. When she died 5 years ago we had this quote from The Tempest:

“Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”

Sorry for your loss 🌺

This one is a classic and beautiful:

“DO NOT STAND AT MY GRAVE AND WEEP” BY MARY ELIZABETH FRYE

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn’s rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die

Song by Christina Rossetti

When I am dead, my dearest,
 Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
 Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
 With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
 And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows,
 I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
 Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
 That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
 And haply may forget.

In Blackwater Woods
Mary Oliver
Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,
the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders
of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

This is by Robert Louis Stevenson. I like the last lines:

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me die.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

.

Remember Me by Christina Rossetti would fit the bill.

It's about looking back with love but getting on with life.