This is a self portrait Rowan made when he was 6 or 7, in the lego days of  Masters of the Universe, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. 

Look at that smile.  

He said it was how he wanted himself to be.  
(Yes, I did ask him, just the month before.)

When he was in grade school I put a chinning bar up on his bedroom door frame.  
He had to jump up to reach it, and chinned himself  jerking his feet up, making toe holes in the ceiling tiles.  

Later, in high school, he worked out with a bench and weights.  

He was a beanpole, like his father, before the meds.  
 

 This is renovations they are doing on the Bodie Island Lighthouse.  

It’s just north of the soft deep road off the highway Rowan would use to drive onto the beach around Oregon Inlet. 
Soft and deep because, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you could be stuck up to your axles in deep sand before your back wheels are off the highway. 

I was always too afraid to try it, but Rowan loved it. 

A few of the origami pieces Rowan has made me over the years.  
Paper gets soft in the humidity, so I framed the one he liked best -
the red warrior.  
 

Rowan Green's Memorial Service
Twiford's Funeral Home, August 5, 2010
by Rev. Patricia Haresch
 

 GATHERING MUSIC

Nirvana Unplugged In New York

OPENING WORDS

Peace, my heart, let the time of parting be sweet,
Let it not be a death, but completeness.
Let love melt into memory, and pain into song.
Let the flight through the sky end in the folding of the wings over the nest.
Let the last touch of your hands be gentle like the flower of the night.
Stand still…for a moment, and say your last words in silence.
I bow to you and hold up my lamp to light you on your way.
-Rabindranath Tagore, adapted

WORDS OF REMEMBERANCE/SHARING

We are gathered here
To remember and honor Rowan Green
Son of Ross and Carletta.  A grandson, a brother, a cousin, a nephew, and a friend.
We come together for we need one another in times of sorrow and loss
But this evening may our time together be more than just a time of grief,
May this also be a celebration of Rowan.
Let us celebrate what he was able to accomplish, his quiet manner, and his ability to make people laugh, despite his life ling struggles.

It must be said
That like heart disease or kidney disease,
Tragically, at such a young age, Rowan succumbed to a disease
A disease of the brain, schizophrenia.
Unfortunately, a disease that even world experts have been unable to cure.
A disease, for which treatments sometimes worked, sometimes didn’t for Rowan.
So, there is no room for blame, really of anybody, or yourselves or of Rowan, or I imagine even the medical community.
In the end, the disease proved to be unmanageable, with an unpredictable course that no one could foresee.

May we rest in the knowledge
That Rowan is finally at peace.

And what an amazing individual he was.
For most of us completing high school, finishing degrees, living on our own, are just rites of passage that we assume we will all accomplish.
For Rowan to achieve all of these is really quite amazing; let alone to earn two degrees.

He whom we love(d) and los(t) is no longer where he was before.
He is now (with us) wherever we are.
-St. John Chrysostom

He is with us in our hearts and minds and memories.
I didn’t know Rowan, and really have shared so little about his life tonight.
As we are gathered here together
Might anyone have a story or memory to share
Something you would like us all to think about when we think of Rowan?

(Carole Hooper, my cousin, shared a few words from the bible.)

It has been written that “no one person can sum up the life of another…Rather it must remain as it is remembered by those who loved and watched and shared.  For such memories are alive, unbound by events of birth and death.  And as living memories, we possess the greatest gifts one person can give another.”
It is in each of you, then that the living memories of Rowan are committed.

PRAYER/MEDITATION or TIME OF SILENCE

Hold those memories for a moment
And together let us make a place for meditation and stillness
in this moment of silence, hold in your heart your best memories of Rowan
Or perhaps in your heart you may wish to send healing and loving thoughts to Rowan’s family or peace as you struggle with grief.
May we enter into reverent silence together.

(Following silence)

Always there is something, something beyond all time.
The past that has hurt slips away; the humiliations, the failures, the resentment,
The sorrows, the haunting fears, dissolve into the healing night.
The darkness is no longer darkness, but a comforting presence,
And it comes, a great peace, flooding the heart.
It comes, a sense of healing forgiveness,
A sense of comprehending and forgiving compassion,
A mourning in which all things are comprehended and made whole
Though we, accepting, comprehend it not.
Always there is something, and we, knowing this, need never fear again,
Nor hate, nor grieve, for there is always something above defeat and success alike,
And to know and feel this is to know the great peace.
-Robert Terry Weston
May it be so.

WORDS OF COMMITTAL

Soon Rowan’s ashes will be committed to the ocean
The water that he loved
And brought him peace.
With these words adapted from Lucille Clifton
Let us imagine that,

…the tide that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
will carry (Rowan) out
beyond the face of fear
may (he) kiss the wind then turn from it
certain that it will love him back
may (he) open (his) eyes to water
water waving forever
and may (he) in (his) innocence
sail through this to that.
-Lucille Clifton adapted

CLOSING WORDS

When the blue hills grow tender, when they pull
The twilight close with gesture beautiful
And shadows are their garments, and the air
Deepens, and the wild veery is at prayer,--
Their arms strong around me; and I know
That somehow I shall follow when you go
To the still land beyond the evening star,
Where everlasting hills and valleys are:
And silence may not hurt us any more,
And terror shall be past, and grief, and war.
-Grace Hazard Conkling

May peace dwell in your heart
And understanding in our mind
May courage steel your will
And Love and Truth forever guide you.

May it be so.

 let us imagine that, ...the tide that is entering even now   
the lip of our understanding 
will carry Rowan out beyond the face of fear  
may he kiss the wind and then turn from it  
certain that it will love him back  
may he open his eyes to water  
water waving forever  
and may he in his innocence  
sail through this  to that.       Lucille Clifton (adapted)

In high school, Rowan bought his first car, a broken down jeep, from a  Coast Guardsman who was being transferred away, when there was still a base down near Oregan Inlet.  
He managed to get it home, and had to teach himself how to get it running.  It meant reading the Chiltons.  He had to replace the transmission more than once, and the engine at least twice. The cloth top was in tatters, I remember it was really cold in the winter, and you could see the road through the floor on the passenger side.  He used an old cookie sheet to cover the hole.  
He really loved that jeep.