Sent: 7 August 2009 17:52
Subject: Tks
Quin
For all that you have done, for all that you are doing, for what you will do, I thank you with every fibre of my being. You have a beautiful heart.
I have created my own “green light” as the manner in which Dignitas is dealing with me is appalling. Know that I will keep you in my heart always.
C
From: Michael Quinton Gilbertson
To: Craig Schonegevel
Sent: 7 August 2009 07:25
Subject: Re: Thx
Dear Craig
Never have I been more lost for words when trying to write an email. I want more than anything to plead with you to wait at the red light but I know this would just cause you more pain.
You are more of a man than I could ever be.
With much love and admiration
Quinton
From: Patsy Schonegevel
To: Brian Gilbertson
Sent: 12 August 2009 12:58
Subject: Thank You
Hi Brian
Thank you for making a special trip to see Craig.
Coming home from the Radisson Hotel this afternoon, Craig and I were both in tears. Craig just carried on saying what a beautiful heart and man you are. I could not agree more. Thank you for helping us to deal with this situation. The days are very long here at home.
You remain my soft pillow to fall on and I could not love you more.
Patsy
From: Brian Gilbertson
To: Patsy Schonegevel
Sent: 12 August 2009 08:34
Subject: Re: Thank You
I am so pleased I could see you (pl). Am filled anew with admiration and awe for how you (pl) are dealing with this awful situation. What a fine young man C is. Mature and reflective and with such dignity and gravitas.
We will feel some of the anguish of your night in Gethsemane.
With Love
B
11George Irvine: Sacred Turf – Encountering a Mystery
George Irvine is a veteran anti-apartheid campaigner and former Methodist Church of South Africa Bishop of the Grahamstown District, and later Natal Coastal.
He is well known for his outspokenness and uncompromising resistance to state oppression during the most violent years of apartheid rule, organising and leading a number of marches, assisting activists and their families and establishing the counselling service LifeLine.
For his contribution, Irvine has been honoured as one of the Forgotten Faces exhibition on permanent display at the Red Location Museum, named after one of the oldest townships in Port Elizabeth. The museum is part of an urban renewal project that aims to keep alive the memory of the anti-apartheid struggle in that region.
Although retired, Irvine remains active in a variety of fields, having started the Institute for Spirituality. He continues to preach, offer spiritual counselling and whatever else may be required of him. He also writes a popular weekly column for The Week End Post, a local English newspaper.
Irvine, an avuncular man in his seventies, works out of a sunny but utilitarian office at the rear of the Humewood Methodist Church in Port Elizabeth.
Humewood is a prosperous and well-manicured suburb, close to the warm Indian Ocean, the popular Kings and Humewood beaches, as well as one of the city’s main tourist attractions, Bay World, an oceanarium and snake park.
One morning in April 2009, Patsy and Craig walked into his office. Craig’s conversations with George took place over five months, sometimes twice a week, before Craig ended his life.
My first impression of Craig was that he looked to me like an average young man. I knew absolutely nothing about his background or where he was coming from. Patsy and Craig walked into my office together.
He began by asking me what I thought about suicide.
I told him that, sometimes, I could understand why people take their own lives. I began talking almost philosophically about it. I told him I have had the privilege of reading letters from people who have committed suicide and I can understand why they do that.
When I read the letters those who have committed suicide have written to me, this course of action is, for them, the completely logical thing to do.
But sometimes there is another option and I think we have to be very careful that we know exactly what we are talking about because I am not saying that suicide is right, nor am I saying that the person who commits suicide is wrong. And so the discussion continued.
Patsy spoke and said that Craig wanted to take his own life.
And I said, “Tell me, Craig, why is that? Help me to understand.”
And that began a five-month journey until he took his life in the end. And the journey for me was frightening and fulfilling because Craig wasn’t talking so much about suicide but about ending his life as a whole person and going to be with God.
Craig had a profound faith and he was totally convinced that God would agree with him doing this because he said he did not want to get to the stage of lying in a bed no longer his real self but a body that would only be a shell because of necessary surgical procedures. The thought of visitors coming to see his “shell” was frightening in the extreme. And so he asked, “George, can you imagine what that would be like? Would God want that for me?”
He never asked the question why God would do this to him. He accepted the journey he had been on and by the time he came to me, he had decided how this journey was going to end.
He never once said to me: “Why did God allow this to happen?”
I remember saying to Craig one day, “Don’t you feel any anger with God?”
He said, “No, I really don’t. I have been well looked after with this thing. But I now know how it will end and I refuse to let it end like that and I believe that God would want me to finish it in a dignified way.”
So, because of my attitude to counselling, I was then able to enter his world and to walk with him on his piece of sacred turf, which
