OBITUARY: Remembering Léon René de Cotret – Chantal Lemothe

23 Oct OBITUARY: Remembering Léon René de Cotret – Chantal Lemothe

I am happy to be able to speak to you today of my sweetheart, my life companion, Léon. He left us peacefully and serenely, as he had wished, at home, surrounded by his loved ones, on Friday, June 3^rd, 2016.

It is impossible to speak of Léon without speaking of his passion for life; he always sought to go beyond, to push the limits. Whether it was skydiving, canoeing over swift rapids, building a Waldorf school, attempting to convert his car to run on used cooking oil (long before this became fashionable…), or becoming the farmer who produced the world’s best biodynamic garlic, for him life was an encounter with passion. And for me, he was Mr. Happiness.

Léon was a seeker interested in everything – people, phenomena, life. Of course, as a reporter he loved to question, research, learn, discover and cause others to discover. But even greater was his thirst for seeking to understand the incomprehensible. He wanted to uncover the mysteries hidden behind the veil, mysteries of what exists before life, what comes after life, and what surrounds the living world, both visible and invisible. He dared to say, to name, to question. In this respect the works of Rudolf Steiner were a source of joy and reflection for him, but also a source of deep questioning.

He was a committed father who happily took on the responsibility of raising his children in such a way that they could grow up being happy and prepared to discover their own truths. And for this the Waldorf school was a source of inspiration for parenting his two children, Samuel and Isa. He always said how proud he was to be married to a Waldorf teacher…

For two years he lived with the knowledge that he had been diagnosed with ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease). He was well aware that he would become a prisoner within his own body. This was an enormous challenge for a man who had always had a tremendous life force. And what a contrast it was for him to live with the disease. And then, little by little, the sickness became a way of learning to deal with the unknown. From the start he said that he was not afraid of death but that he didn’t know how he would be able to deal with the loss of his autonomy.

Today I can safely say that during his last two years, as the disease progressed, it is as if he had accepted to meet his opposite and confront a place where happiness is not an option, where passion no longer has a role to play, where defeat struggles to engulf everything that previously was so filled with light, where solitude is one’s only companion. To dare to be alone with oneself, to meet oneself in one’s opposite. The Mr. Happiness of his former self now dared to experience unhappiness, sadness, discouragement. The great communicator that he had once been was now reduced to living with the absence of the spoken word. He appeared to have deep thoughts that he was no longer able to communicate. He who had loved people and social exchanges now experienced solitude and even complete withdrawal. He who had been so self-sufficient had now to experience being totally dependent on others and allowing others to do for him what he could no longer do for himself.

Several weeks before the end, when a friend asked him how he was dealing with his suffering, he answered: I am cultivating it within me in order to learn humility (for I have not known much suffering during my life), I am learning compassion for my next incarnation or for whatever may be in store for me.

Death was a constant presence for him during these last years, and yet he never complained. Léon, who always wanted to do things his way and by himself, welcomed each of his caretakers with his whole heart. And I think I can say, having heard their comments, that each of them was deeply moved by him.

Even in this last stage of his life he opened a path for many of us – showing us how one can open oneself up to the presence of death, to the presence of life in death. His sickness actually created a network of love around him and around us, the members of his family. Meals, words, chess games, errands, work around the house, singing – these and so many, many other things were brought by those who came to form a community around Léon and, indeed, around the death with which he was coming to terms. I have no words to express my gratitude to all these close friends for having given of themselves to create this mantle of warmth.

During the last year of Léon’s life, our daughter Isa announced that a child would soon be born into the family. Léon hoped for the longest while that he would still be there to welcome the baby and be privileged enough to hold it in his arms. And then he convinced us that if he was no longer on this earth to be able to do so, he would have a front row seat to witness the exchange that takes place between those beings who have just left this earth and those who are coming down into incarnation. Élio, his first grandchild, was born 9 days after his passing.

I am convinced that they did indeed cross paths, and that this grandchild was able somehow to experience the essence of his grandad, a being of such enormous depth.

Good bye, Léon

With all my love.

Chantal

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Léon always had a great love of sailing, and this poem expresses beautifully how he thought of death.

Poem by William Blake

“What is dying?

I am standing in the sea shore,

a ship sails to the morning breeze

and starts for the ocean.

She is an object of beauty

and I stand watching her

till at last she fades

on the horizon

and someone at my side says,

‘She is gone.’

Gone! Where?

Gone from my sight–that is all.

She is just as large in the masts, hull and spars

as she was when I saw her,

and just as able to bear her load of living

freight to its destination.

The diminished size and total loss of sight is in me,

not in her;

and just at the moment when someone at my side says,

‘she is gone’

there are others who are watching her coming,

and others take up a glad shout–

‘There she comes!’ – and that is dying.”