Reflection on the week of Liminal Thoughts

It has been a rather "strained" and strange, week for me unfortunately.

I had to attend the funeral of a close old friend of mine on Wednesday.   I was asked by his son, somewhat unexpectedly that morning, to be a poll bearer for him, both for his funeral service at a local church, and again, at his internment.  This of course, I considered as an honour for me, and I readily agreed.  My friend David had been a driving and inpirational force for me through my twenties and early thirties.  Much of my values and beliefs of fairness and right and wrong were influenced at that time, and he truly was a guiding light.  Lowering his coffin into a deep hole on the side of a hill cemetary seemed to me to be undignified in a way, and I have dwelled on the image pressed on my mind.  Such finality.

Later this week, we also heard of the death of Nelson Mandella.  Strangely, news of this second death has really affected me emotionally too. I was already in a liminal space you could say, after literally laying my friend David to rest.  Nelson Mandella too was extremely inspirational.  His simple but unwavering determination for proper and recognised equality, regardless of colour, creed, religion or anything else, has been truly amazing.  This strength of character in the belief of right and wrong.
 In my own past, I have found great strength in the poem that I understand, was Mr Mandella's only source of courage during the many years of imprisonment on Robin Island, this being the poem "Invictus" by William Ernest Henley (1849–1903).

But the vulnerability of loosing respected others has taken it's toll on my own motivation, and I have found it hard to escape what I can now genuinely call a liminal state!

I am in a no-man's land.  I am in a zone of in-between-ness, but in my own case, there is nobody conducting the order of service, or right of passage, that I have mentioned before, is the additional essential ingredient for Liminality, according to Van Gannep.

.... Or is that Master of Ceremonies me?

I think it must be.

..... But I seem to be unable to move forward and have been rather lost for the last few sad days. I feel I am waiting for some sort of queue or prompt, just as an MC would, in order for me to move on....