Funeral Brian Radcliffe (Russell) Eley – 05 24 2022
Andreas Wöhle
Welcome everyone who came here today! Welcome to Brian Ratcliffe (Russel) Eley's farewell…however, most of us knew him by another name: David… A moment of farewell to a special person. A farewell that certainly, - in many ways is as unpredictable as he himself and all his life... For those who don't know me ... and that was also really something for David or Brian...: He kept the circles of people with whom he associated emphatically separated... - I am Andreas Wöhle, Lutheran pastor here in Amsterdam. I have arranged with Brian (or David) over the years and spent time and again in conversation and meetings at PRACTICAL life counselling in the most UNPRACTICAL setting... right up to the end of his life... Here and now one last moment: Room for all of us to reminisce and to remember him one more time in all the vulnerability and strangeness that hung around him... A MOMENT FOR DAVID... And - at least from my relationship with him it fits. ...as far as anything at all suits David... a kind of prayer...A prayer for David:
You who are: source of our longing for security, beginning and end of all our questions: Keep us together here in this room, as people connected in the story of this one, this COLORFUL OTHER: David - Brian . He is close to our hearts. And we wish, yes, we pray that he finds and accepts the security that he so deeply longed for and which at the same time he also deconstructed again and again... .perhaps because it came too close for him otherwise... Brian - David.. Write his name and his being in the palm of your hand, as it is written in our hearts and memories. AMEN
Dear people, how to say goodbye to a story and to a person who was as multicoloured as the strange group of people gathered here today? As far as I'm concerned, it's also a matter of language: we usually had our personal conversations in English. And for me that was part of him. He was masterly at home in that language culture, and his erudition sparkled with images and word games that it was a pleasure to listen to him... Fine humour, sharp analysis, sometimes twinkling eyes when an image or comparison was particularly successful... And with the strangest stories imaginable... The inward sadness that his gaze could have at times and which for me also speaks from the photo here on his coffin - ... a photo of a young Brian.. The sadness turned inward was sometimes lifted in the animated conversations and the witticisms. And you got an idea of the wonderful person hiding behind the stories… stories that quickly tumbled over each other. He reached the age of 75 years, and of those 75 years he spent more than 30 years as a "onderduiker" (Dutch special word!) you could say… as someone who didn't feel safe anywhere… not really… except perhaps with a few people ... and on a few moments...
I've recently wondered what made him choose that new name... that hiding name DAVID... And for myself I have found a possible answer to it. David – KING David... That is – in the Biblically grafted cultural tradition of Western civilization – THE king par excellence! And for a chess player like David that is THE chess piece that everything revolves around... On the chessboard also the most vulnerable of all chess pieces, the one who always needs to have it from everyone else if he wants to survive... But at the same time the Chess King is also the one who keeps the awareness awake in others: "It's about making the most vulnerable ones safe. That is a main goal in the game of life ..." I thought it suited David... with how his life has developed: Life as a chess game... After all, in 1971 he had, as it turned out to me, a lot later, when then 24 year old Brian Radcliffe Eley won the British Chess Championship. And that in a 24 sets victory over the Czech-Slovak chess grandmaster Ludek Pachman. A sensation, then! An entire country that was proud of its young hero... Followed by first years of successful chess playing, chess lessons, online and offline coaching... but also by intrigue and power games within the British chess world... That's for him I think , been too much ahead... in those early years... That attention..., that constant pressure, ... It probably alienated him to some extent... or deprived him of the opportunity to find and understand himself beyond the chessboard, beyond the image that others had of him... It is certainly also what eventually made him stumble, and made him experience a large part of the world as an unsafe place ... At least in England he was unsafe, That's why he left his father- or motherland for reasons not to be judged here - to go into hiding in Amsterdam... Leaving his name "Brian" behind... Leaving his " Life of Brian" behind...... I have recently also been thinking a lot about that other Brian – that of Monty Python – Also a Brian who ends up in a game of forces and powers in which he himself at a given moment does not has more control over what happens in his life... In addition, that Brian (in Monthy Python's Life of Brian) is in a sense denied the right to be different from the outside image of others and become who he is... of inside... Our David or Brian was a downright tragic figure: Someone who had the idiom of Shakespeare's "As you like it" in his cultural baggage, where you can read that "All the world's a stage, and all men and women merely players..." And at the same time someone with the humor of Monty Python: "Always look at the bright s ide of life..." and "Life is but a shit – if you look at it..."--- Brian Radcliffe (Russel) Eley... In living and dying a man who could confuse others, but who – living in miserable circumstances himself – also regularly took care of others: He made contacts to the food bank for those who did not have contact themselves... He came up with proposals for alternative medication when my health was ailing... A wounded healer...somewhere, and a wonderful person Brian-David... If I wished anything for him... If I could speak to him one more time...I might quote from the songs of that old king David: The Psalms - attributed to King David... Like Psalm 23 - a well-known psalm, David would surely have known him... A Song of King David that responds in a strange way to desolation that comes with Job is also expressed in chapter 23... King David sings in that psalm:
The LORD is my shepherd,
I lack nothing.
He makes me rest in green meadows
and leads me to peaceful waters,
he gives me new strength
and lead me along safe paths
in honour of his name.
Though my way goes
through a dark valley,
I fear no danger,
because you are with me,
your rod and your staff,
they give me courage.
You invite me to the table
in front of the enemy,
you anoint my head with oil,
my cup overflows.
Happiness and grace follow me
all the days of my life,
I return to the house of the ETERNAL
to the length of days.---
May David's way... May Brian's way into the depths of existence, beyond the border of life and death, be surrounded and carried by these images. AMEN
Music Elgar - Nimrod
Story of Caroline Entrop:
David for us, his real name is Brian, came to visit us in 1988. I think he reported to a church and they didn't know what to do with him and my husband could help him. He had just come to the Netherlands from England and had to orientate himself here.
He had an argument with the chess federation and they had sued him and he then fled to the Netherlands. In that sense he was a fugitive of the law.
He was a computer expert and he could build his existence with that.
He's been fixing our computers for years. We had to use linux and windows was not done and google not at all. There was no discussion about that, it had to be done his way, which sometimes resulted in anger in me. He remained stoic. So I learned that getting angry didn't help. He meditated a lot and the next time he came it was as if nothing had happened. I sometimes felt guilty that I had become so angry. The computer was always repaired. By the way, he was right, but I didn't want to live that way without google. How it happened every time exactly the way he wanted it, I can't say exactly.
I think David went to school at Eton, a very well known school in England. In any case, it is the school where the Harry Potter film was shot.
David was very well-read and you can't bring up a subject without being able to talk about it.
- I've had a lot of advice about my garden, He knew all about roses,
- he was aware of politics and had an opinion about it and background information. he was listening to the bbc radio at 6 in the morning where the real information was displayed.
- he studied chemistry and researched everything in the field of food and medicine and had something to say about it.
- His knowledge of history was fabulous.
- He was a good piano player.
- He was a very good chess player
- A computer expert
- It is sad that he has not been able to use all this knowledge in his life.
He told about his life in England that he came home and an aunt had cut all his roses from his rose hedge. That while David knows everything about roses and that was a real hobby of his. I said you weren't furious. He reacted resignedly and shrugged.
On the TV in the early 90s on the BBC was a series, I believe "keeping up appearances". Anyway, it was about a very dominant woman with a husband who trudged after her. David said in passing she looks like my mother. He was an only child and it would not have been easy with such a mother and aunt. But if you kept asking, he changed the subject and I felt I shouldn't keep asking.
In any case, that wouldn't have made him very resilient. Because mother and aunt know everything better and do what they say. Perhaps this explains why he ran away from a lawsuit.
The boarding school with its intelligence must have been a liberation for him. †
He had many friends in the Netherlands, but they were separate circuits. An address list is missing, I do not know his friends nor did he want to give the addresses where he lived. He kept it all separate.
I think each of us experienced a different side of him depending on the context in which you met him.
He has moved a lot and his things are everywhere. His penultimate house has killed him. He lost weight and I can imagine that the landlady got worried. At the same time, he was very afraid of this landlord. The landlord drank and did not have a nice drink according to David. He was then pushed into a car that looked like an ambulance and drove to the OLVG and handed in there, with the announcement that he had corona. He was there for 9 days. He didn't have corona, but he did have a bacterium. He had no aftercare. He refused to go to a doctor and ask what exactly had happened in the hospital, he had not received any medication from the hospital, nor did he want to go to a doctor for that. Also when I asked what are you doing, he kept insisting that he knew what he had, namely a heart rhythm abnormality since he was 4 years old. His English sense of humour remained. When a doctor in the hospital asked him what year it was, he answered 2 ducks. You have to read comic books to understand that two ducks means 22.
He hardly ate, his stomach could not bear it. He also didn't want to take anything home for another meal. I couldn't say anything to him.
The last email I got from him was : I just took a few days holiday. The first part was relaxing, but the second part was not.:
I arrived back in not a very good state, but with a few ideas clarified.
Another email in a few days. I didn't respond to it.
4 days later an email, need anti mouse boxes, can you help.
I had no address, and 2 days later he passed away. On April 4.
I knew walking home away from me was strenuous for him, but realized afterwards that he probably couldn't come to me. He was probably too weakened.
I'm very glad that, when Sjuaat (name) didn't hear from him, he went after him and alerted the police so that he was found.
From Natalie, I heard he once said that he was nobody.
It's sad that it had to end like this. On the other hand, it is unbelievable how David has managed to survive in the Netherlands. He was no match for the aggression in our Western society, and had difficulty defending himself against aggression. In that sense, he was far too kind and vulnerable. From an early age there was no room to share his feelings. He was nobody to everyone, even I felt I shouldn't keep asking. With his intelligence he could make friends, but he couldn't show what something was doing to him.
Andreas Wöhle continuation
In these colorful and cross stories, something about David or Brian shines that is bigger and more open than anything that could be said in closing. And perhaps what Paul says applies to this: "Now we look in a blurred mirror, but soon we will be face to face. Now my knowledge is still limited, but soon I will know completely, as I myself am known..." May Brian - David experience that: to be known to the depth of existence. AMEN
Brian Radcliffe Eley's story has come to an end here for now. We hand over his body. "Dust art thou and to dust thou shalt return" But the memories remain. Therefore: Be blessed then, living and dead, And the peace of the Eternal, which is greater than all our thinking and reasoning, Guide us in our way. AMEN
Andreas Wöhle
Welcome everyone who came here today! Welcome to Brian Ratcliffe (Russel) Eley's farewell…however, most of us knew him by another name: David… A moment of farewell to a special person. A farewell that certainly, - in many ways is as unpredictable as he himself and all his life... For those who don't know me ... and that was also really something for David or Brian...: He kept the circles of people with whom he associated emphatically separated... - I am Andreas Wöhle, Lutheran pastor here in Amsterdam. I have arranged with Brian (or David) over the years and spent time and again in conversation and meetings at PRACTICAL life counselling in the most UNPRACTICAL setting... right up to the end of his life... Here and now one last moment: Room for all of us to reminisce and to remember him one more time in all the vulnerability and strangeness that hung around him... A MOMENT FOR DAVID... And - at least from my relationship with him it fits. ...as far as anything at all suits David... a kind of prayer...A prayer for David:
You who are: source of our longing for security, beginning and end of all our questions: Keep us together here in this room, as people connected in the story of this one, this COLORFUL OTHER: David - Brian . He is close to our hearts. And we wish, yes, we pray that he finds and accepts the security that he so deeply longed for and which at the same time he also deconstructed again and again... .perhaps because it came too close for him otherwise... Brian - David.. Write his name and his being in the palm of your hand, as it is written in our hearts and memories. AMEN
Dear people, how to say goodbye to a story and to a person who was as multicoloured as the strange group of people gathered here today? As far as I'm concerned, it's also a matter of language: we usually had our personal conversations in English. And for me that was part of him. He was masterly at home in that language culture, and his erudition sparkled with images and word games that it was a pleasure to listen to him... Fine humour, sharp analysis, sometimes twinkling eyes when an image or comparison was particularly successful... And with the strangest stories imaginable... The inward sadness that his gaze could have at times and which for me also speaks from the photo here on his coffin - ... a photo of a young Brian.. The sadness turned inward was sometimes lifted in the animated conversations and the witticisms. And you got an idea of the wonderful person hiding behind the stories… stories that quickly tumbled over each other. He reached the age of 75 years, and of those 75 years he spent more than 30 years as a "onderduiker" (Dutch special word!) you could say… as someone who didn't feel safe anywhere… not really… except perhaps with a few people ... and on a few moments...
I've recently wondered what made him choose that new name... that hiding name DAVID... And for myself I have found a possible answer to it. David – KING David... That is – in the Biblically grafted cultural tradition of Western civilization – THE king par excellence! And for a chess player like David that is THE chess piece that everything revolves around... On the chessboard also the most vulnerable of all chess pieces, the one who always needs to have it from everyone else if he wants to survive... But at the same time the Chess King is also the one who keeps the awareness awake in others: "It's about making the most vulnerable ones safe. That is a main goal in the game of life ..." I thought it suited David... with how his life has developed: Life as a chess game... After all, in 1971 he had, as it turned out to me, a lot later, when then 24 year old Brian Radcliffe Eley won the British Chess Championship. And that in a 24 sets victory over the Czech-Slovak chess grandmaster Ludek Pachman. A sensation, then! An entire country that was proud of its young hero... Followed by first years of successful chess playing, chess lessons, online and offline coaching... but also by intrigue and power games within the British chess world... That's for him I think , been too much ahead... in those early years... That attention..., that constant pressure, ... It probably alienated him to some extent... or deprived him of the opportunity to find and understand himself beyond the chessboard, beyond the image that others had of him... It is certainly also what eventually made him stumble, and made him experience a large part of the world as an unsafe place ... At least in England he was unsafe, That's why he left his father- or motherland for reasons not to be judged here - to go into hiding in Amsterdam... Leaving his name "Brian" behind... Leaving his " Life of Brian" behind...... I have recently also been thinking a lot about that other Brian – that of Monty Python – Also a Brian who ends up in a game of forces and powers in which he himself at a given moment does not has more control over what happens in his life... In addition, that Brian (in Monthy Python's Life of Brian) is in a sense denied the right to be different from the outside image of others and become who he is... of inside... Our David or Brian was a downright tragic figure: Someone who had the idiom of Shakespeare's "As you like it" in his cultural baggage, where you can read that "All the world's a stage, and all men and women merely players..." And at the same time someone with the humor of Monty Python: "Always look at the bright s ide of life..." and "Life is but a shit – if you look at it..."--- Brian Radcliffe (Russel) Eley... In living and dying a man who could confuse others, but who – living in miserable circumstances himself – also regularly took care of others: He made contacts to the food bank for those who did not have contact themselves... He came up with proposals for alternative medication when my health was ailing... A wounded healer...somewhere, and a wonderful person Brian-David... If I wished anything for him... If I could speak to him one more time...I might quote from the songs of that old king David: The Psalms - attributed to King David... Like Psalm 23 - a well-known psalm, David would surely have known him... A Song of King David that responds in a strange way to desolation that comes with Job is also expressed in chapter 23... King David sings in that psalm:
The LORD is my shepherd,
I lack nothing.
He makes me rest in green meadows
and leads me to peaceful waters,
he gives me new strength
and lead me along safe paths
in honour of his name.
Though my way goes
through a dark valley,
I fear no danger,
because you are with me,
your rod and your staff,
they give me courage.
You invite me to the table
in front of the enemy,
you anoint my head with oil,
my cup overflows.
Happiness and grace follow me
all the days of my life,
I return to the house of the ETERNAL
to the length of days.---
May David's way... May Brian's way into the depths of existence, beyond the border of life and death, be surrounded and carried by these images. AMEN
Music Elgar - Nimrod
Story of Caroline Entrop:
David for us, his real name is Brian, came to visit us in 1988. I think he reported to a church and they didn't know what to do with him and my husband could help him. He had just come to the Netherlands from England and had to orientate himself here.
He had an argument with the chess federation and they had sued him and he then fled to the Netherlands. In that sense he was a fugitive of the law.
He was a computer expert and he could build his existence with that.
He's been fixing our computers for years. We had to use linux and windows was not done and google not at all. There was no discussion about that, it had to be done his way, which sometimes resulted in anger in me. He remained stoic. So I learned that getting angry didn't help. He meditated a lot and the next time he came it was as if nothing had happened. I sometimes felt guilty that I had become so angry. The computer was always repaired. By the way, he was right, but I didn't want to live that way without google. How it happened every time exactly the way he wanted it, I can't say exactly.
I think David went to school at Eton, a very well known school in England. In any case, it is the school where the Harry Potter film was shot.
David was very well-read and you can't bring up a subject without being able to talk about it.
- I've had a lot of advice about my garden, He knew all about roses,
- he was aware of politics and had an opinion about it and background information. he was listening to the bbc radio at 6 in the morning where the real information was displayed.
- he studied chemistry and researched everything in the field of food and medicine and had something to say about it.
- His knowledge of history was fabulous.
- He was a good piano player.
- He was a very good chess player
- A computer expert
- It is sad that he has not been able to use all this knowledge in his life.
He told about his life in England that he came home and an aunt had cut all his roses from his rose hedge. That while David knows everything about roses and that was a real hobby of his. I said you weren't furious. He reacted resignedly and shrugged.
On the TV in the early 90s on the BBC was a series, I believe "keeping up appearances". Anyway, it was about a very dominant woman with a husband who trudged after her. David said in passing she looks like my mother. He was an only child and it would not have been easy with such a mother and aunt. But if you kept asking, he changed the subject and I felt I shouldn't keep asking.
In any case, that wouldn't have made him very resilient. Because mother and aunt know everything better and do what they say. Perhaps this explains why he ran away from a lawsuit.
The boarding school with its intelligence must have been a liberation for him. †
He had many friends in the Netherlands, but they were separate circuits. An address list is missing, I do not know his friends nor did he want to give the addresses where he lived. He kept it all separate.
I think each of us experienced a different side of him depending on the context in which you met him.
He has moved a lot and his things are everywhere. His penultimate house has killed him. He lost weight and I can imagine that the landlady got worried. At the same time, he was very afraid of this landlord. The landlord drank and did not have a nice drink according to David. He was then pushed into a car that looked like an ambulance and drove to the OLVG and handed in there, with the announcement that he had corona. He was there for 9 days. He didn't have corona, but he did have a bacterium. He had no aftercare. He refused to go to a doctor and ask what exactly had happened in the hospital, he had not received any medication from the hospital, nor did he want to go to a doctor for that. Also when I asked what are you doing, he kept insisting that he knew what he had, namely a heart rhythm abnormality since he was 4 years old. His English sense of humour remained. When a doctor in the hospital asked him what year it was, he answered 2 ducks. You have to read comic books to understand that two ducks means 22.
He hardly ate, his stomach could not bear it. He also didn't want to take anything home for another meal. I couldn't say anything to him.
The last email I got from him was : I just took a few days holiday. The first part was relaxing, but the second part was not.:
I arrived back in not a very good state, but with a few ideas clarified.
Another email in a few days. I didn't respond to it.
4 days later an email, need anti mouse boxes, can you help.
I had no address, and 2 days later he passed away. On April 4.
I knew walking home away from me was strenuous for him, but realized afterwards that he probably couldn't come to me. He was probably too weakened.
I'm very glad that, when Sjuaat (name) didn't hear from him, he went after him and alerted the police so that he was found.
From Natalie, I heard he once said that he was nobody.
It's sad that it had to end like this. On the other hand, it is unbelievable how David has managed to survive in the Netherlands. He was no match for the aggression in our Western society, and had difficulty defending himself against aggression. In that sense, he was far too kind and vulnerable. From an early age there was no room to share his feelings. He was nobody to everyone, even I felt I shouldn't keep asking. With his intelligence he could make friends, but he couldn't show what something was doing to him.
Andreas Wöhle continuation
In these colorful and cross stories, something about David or Brian shines that is bigger and more open than anything that could be said in closing. And perhaps what Paul says applies to this: "Now we look in a blurred mirror, but soon we will be face to face. Now my knowledge is still limited, but soon I will know completely, as I myself am known..." May Brian - David experience that: to be known to the depth of existence. AMEN
Brian Radcliffe Eley's story has come to an end here for now. We hand over his body. "Dust art thou and to dust thou shalt return" But the memories remain. Therefore: Be blessed then, living and dead, And the peace of the Eternal, which is greater than all our thinking and reasoning, Guide us in our way. AMEN
Funeral Brian Radcliffe (Russell) Eley – 05 24 2022
Andreas Wöhle
Welcome everyone who came here today! Welcome to Brian Ratcliffe (Russel) Eley's farewell…however, most of us knew him by another name: David… A moment of farewell to a special person. A farewell that certainly, - in many ways is as unpredictable as he himself and all his life... For those who don't know me ... and that was also really something for David or Brian...: He kept the circles of people with whom he associated emphatically separated... - I am Andreas Wöhle, Lutheran pastor here in Amsterdam. I have arranged with Brian (or David) over the years and spent time and again in conversation and meetings at PRACTICAL life counselling in the most UNPRACTICAL setting... right up to the end of his life... Here and now one last moment: Room for all of us to reminisce and to remember him one more time in all the vulnerability and strangeness that hung around him... A MOMENT FOR DAVID... And - at least from my relationship with him it fits. ...as far as anything at all suits David... a kind of prayer...A prayer for David:
You who are: source of our longing for security, beginning and end of all our questions: Keep us together here in this room, as people connected in the story of this one, this COLORFUL OTHER: David - Brian . He is close to our hearts. And we wish, yes, we pray that he finds and accepts the security that he so deeply longed for and which at the same time he also deconstructed again and again... .perhaps because it came too close for him otherwise... Brian - David.. Write his name and his being in the palm of your hand, as it is written in our hearts and memories. AMEN
Dear people, how to say goodbye to a story and to a person who was as multicoloured as the strange group of people gathered here today? As far as I'm concerned, it's also a matter of language: we usually had our personal conversations in English. And for me that was part of him. He was masterly at home in that language culture, and his erudition sparkled with images and word games that it was a pleasure to listen to him... Fine humour, sharp analysis, sometimes twinkling eyes when an image or comparison was particularly successful... And with the strangest stories imaginable... The inward sadness that his gaze could have at times and which for me also speaks from the photo here on his coffin - ... a photo of a young Brian.. The sadness turned inward was sometimes lifted in the animated conversations and the witticisms. And you got an idea of the wonderful person hiding behind the stories… stories that quickly tumbled over each other. He reached the age of 75 years, and of those 75 years he spent more than 30 years as a "onderduiker" (Dutch special word!) you could say… as someone who didn't feel safe anywhere… not really… except perhaps with a few people ... and on a few moments...
I've recently wondered what made him choose that new name... that hiding name DAVID... And for myself I have found a possible answer to it. David – KING David... That is – in the Biblically grafted cultural tradition of Western civilization – THE king par excellence! And for a chess player like David that is THE chess piece that everything revolves around... On the chessboard also the most vulnerable of all chess pieces, the one who always needs to have it from everyone else if he wants to survive... But at the same time the Chess King is also the one who keeps the awareness awake in others: "It's about making the most vulnerable ones safe. That is a main goal in the game of life ..." I thought it suited David... with how his life has developed: Life as a chess game... After all, in 1971 he had, as it turned out to me, a lot later, when then 24 year old Brian Radcliffe Eley won the British Chess Championship. And that in a 24 sets victory over the Czech-Slovak chess grandmaster Ludek Pachman. A sensation, then! An entire country that was proud of its young hero... Followed by first years of successful chess playing, chess lessons, online and offline coaching... but also by intrigue and power games within the British chess world... That's for him I think , been too much ahead... in those early years... That attention..., that constant pressure, ... It probably alienated him to some extent... or deprived him of the opportunity to find and understand himself beyond the chessboard, beyond the image that others had of him... It is certainly also what eventually made him stumble, and made him experience a large part of the world as an unsafe place ... At least in England he was unsafe, That's why he left his father- or motherland for reasons not to be judged here - to go into hiding in Amsterdam... Leaving his name "Brian" behind... Leaving his " Life of Brian" behind...... I have recently also been thinking a lot about that other Brian – that of Monty Python – Also a Brian who ends up in a game of forces and powers in which he himself at a given moment does not has more control over what happens in his life... In addition, that Brian (in Monthy Python's Life of Brian) is in a sense denied the right to be different from the outside image of others and become who he is... of inside... Our David or Brian was a downright tragic figure: Someone who had the idiom of Shakespeare's "As you like it" in his cultural baggage, where you can read that "All the world's a stage, and all men and women merely players..." And at the same time someone with the humor of Monty Python: "Always look at the bright s ide of life..." and "Life is but a shit – if you look at it..."--- Brian Radcliffe (Russel) Eley... In living and dying a man who could confuse others, but who – living in miserable circumstances himself – also regularly took care of others: He made contacts to the food bank for those who did not have contact themselves... He came up with proposals for alternative medication when my health was ailing... A wounded healer...somewhere, and a wonderful person Brian-David... If I wished anything for him... If I could speak to him one more time...I might quote from the songs of that old king David: The Psalms - attributed to King David... Like Psalm 23 - a well-known psalm, David would surely have known him... A Song of King David that responds in a strange way to desolation that comes with Job is also expressed in chapter 23... King David sings in that psalm:
The LORD is my shepherd,
I lack nothing.
He makes me rest in green meadows
and leads me to peaceful waters,
he gives me new strength
and lead me along safe paths
in honour of his name.
Though my way goes
through a dark valley,
I fear no danger,
because you are with me,
your rod and your staff,
they give me courage.
You invite me to the table
in front of the enemy,
you anoint my head with oil,
my cup overflows.
Happiness and grace follow me
all the days of my life,
I return to the house of the ETERNAL
to the length of days.---
May David's way... May Brian's way into the depths of existence, beyond the border of life and death, be surrounded and carried by these images. AMEN
Music Elgar - Nimrod
Story of Caroline Entrop:
David for us, his real name is Brian, came to visit us in 1988. I think he reported to a church and they didn't know what to do with him and my husband could help him. He had just come to the Netherlands from England and had to orientate himself here.
He had an argument with the chess federation and they had sued him and he then fled to the Netherlands. In that sense he was a fugitive of the law.
He was a computer expert and he could build his existence with that.
He's been fixing our computers for years. We had to use linux and windows was not done and google not at all. There was no discussion about that, it had to be done his way, which sometimes resulted in anger in me. He remained stoic. So I learned that getting angry didn't help. He meditated a lot and the next time he came it was as if nothing had happened. I sometimes felt guilty that I had become so angry. The computer was always repaired. By the way, he was right, but I didn't want to live that way without google. How it happened every time exactly the way he wanted it, I can't say exactly.
I think David went to school at Eton, a very well known school in England. In any case, it is the school where the Harry Potter film was shot.
David was very well-read and you can't bring up a subject without being able to talk about it.
- I've had a lot of advice about my garden, He knew all about roses,
- he was aware of politics and had an opinion about it and background information. he was listening to the bbc radio at 6 in the morning where the real information was displayed.
- he studied chemistry and researched everything in the field of food and medicine and had something to say about it.
- His knowledge of history was fabulous.
- He was a good piano player.
- He was a very good chess player
- A computer expert
- It is sad that he has not been able to use all this knowledge in his life.
He told about his life in England that he came home and an aunt had cut all his roses from his rose hedge. That while David knows everything about roses and that was a real hobby of his. I said you weren't furious. He reacted resignedly and shrugged.
On the TV in the early 90s on the BBC was a series, I believe "keeping up appearances". Anyway, it was about a very dominant woman with a husband who trudged after her. David said in passing she looks like my mother. He was an only child and it would not have been easy with such a mother and aunt. But if you kept asking, he changed the subject and I felt I shouldn't keep asking.
In any case, that wouldn't have made him very resilient. Because mother and aunt know everything better and do what they say. Perhaps this explains why he ran away from a lawsuit.
The boarding school with its intelligence must have been a liberation for him. †
He had many friends in the Netherlands, but they were separate circuits. An address list is missing, I do not know his friends nor did he want to give the addresses where he lived. He kept it all separate.
I think each of us experienced a different side of him depending on the context in which you met him.
He has moved a lot and his things are everywhere. His penultimate house has killed him. He lost weight and I can imagine that the landlady got worried. At the same time, he was very afraid of this landlord. The landlord drank and did not have a nice drink according to David. He was then pushed into a car that looked like an ambulance and drove to the OLVG and handed in there, with the announcement that he had corona. He was there for 9 days. He didn't have corona, but he did have a bacterium. He had no aftercare. He refused to go to a doctor and ask what exactly had happened in the hospital, he had not received any medication from the hospital, nor did he want to go to a doctor for that. Also when I asked what are you doing, he kept insisting that he knew what he had, namely a heart rhythm abnormality since he was 4 years old. His English sense of humour remained. When a doctor in the hospital asked him what year it was, he answered 2 ducks. You have to read comic books to understand that two ducks means 22.
He hardly ate, his stomach could not bear it. He also didn't want to take anything home for another meal. I couldn't say anything to him.
The last email I got from him was : I just took a few days holiday. The first part was relaxing, but the second part was not.:
I arrived back in not a very good state, but with a few ideas clarified.
Another email in a few days. I didn't respond to it.
4 days later an email, need anti mouse boxes, can you help.
I had no address, and 2 days later he passed away. On April 4.
I knew walking home away from me was strenuous for him, but realized afterwards that he probably couldn't come to me. He was probably too weakened.
I'm very glad that, when Sjuaat (name) didn't hear from him, he went after him and alerted the police so that he was found.
From Natalie, I heard he once said that he was nobody.
It's sad that it had to end like this. On the other hand, it is unbelievable how David has managed to survive in the Netherlands. He was no match for the aggression in our Western society, and had difficulty defending himself against aggression. In that sense, he was far too kind and vulnerable. From an early age there was no room to share his feelings. He was nobody to everyone, even I felt I shouldn't keep asking. With his intelligence he could make friends, but he couldn't show what something was doing to him.
Andreas Wöhle continuation
In these colorful and cross stories, something about David or Brian shines that is bigger and more open than anything that could be said in closing. And perhaps what Paul says applies to this: "Now we look in a blurred mirror, but soon we will be face to face. Now my knowledge is still limited, but soon I will know completely, as I myself am known..." May Brian - David experience that: to be known to the depth of existence. AMEN
Brian Radcliffe Eley's story has come to an end here for now. We hand over his body. "Dust art thou and to dust thou shalt return" But the memories remain. Therefore: Be blessed then, living and dead, And the peace of the Eternal, which is greater than all our thinking and reasoning, Guide us in our way. AMEN
Andreas Wöhle
Welcome everyone who came here today! Welcome to Brian Ratcliffe (Russel) Eley's farewell…however, most of us knew him by another name: David… A moment of farewell to a special person. A farewell that certainly, - in many ways is as unpredictable as he himself and all his life... For those who don't know me ... and that was also really something for David or Brian...: He kept the circles of people with whom he associated emphatically separated... - I am Andreas Wöhle, Lutheran pastor here in Amsterdam. I have arranged with Brian (or David) over the years and spent time and again in conversation and meetings at PRACTICAL life counselling in the most UNPRACTICAL setting... right up to the end of his life... Here and now one last moment: Room for all of us to reminisce and to remember him one more time in all the vulnerability and strangeness that hung around him... A MOMENT FOR DAVID... And - at least from my relationship with him it fits. ...as far as anything at all suits David... a kind of prayer...A prayer for David:
You who are: source of our longing for security, beginning and end of all our questions: Keep us together here in this room, as people connected in the story of this one, this COLORFUL OTHER: David - Brian . He is close to our hearts. And we wish, yes, we pray that he finds and accepts the security that he so deeply longed for and which at the same time he also deconstructed again and again... .perhaps because it came too close for him otherwise... Brian - David.. Write his name and his being in the palm of your hand, as it is written in our hearts and memories. AMEN
Dear people, how to say goodbye to a story and to a person who was as multicoloured as the strange group of people gathered here today? As far as I'm concerned, it's also a matter of language: we usually had our personal conversations in English. And for me that was part of him. He was masterly at home in that language culture, and his erudition sparkled with images and word games that it was a pleasure to listen to him... Fine humour, sharp analysis, sometimes twinkling eyes when an image or comparison was particularly successful... And with the strangest stories imaginable... The inward sadness that his gaze could have at times and which for me also speaks from the photo here on his coffin - ... a photo of a young Brian.. The sadness turned inward was sometimes lifted in the animated conversations and the witticisms. And you got an idea of the wonderful person hiding behind the stories… stories that quickly tumbled over each other. He reached the age of 75 years, and of those 75 years he spent more than 30 years as a "onderduiker" (Dutch special word!) you could say… as someone who didn't feel safe anywhere… not really… except perhaps with a few people ... and on a few moments...
I've recently wondered what made him choose that new name... that hiding name DAVID... And for myself I have found a possible answer to it. David – KING David... That is – in the Biblically grafted cultural tradition of Western civilization – THE king par excellence! And for a chess player like David that is THE chess piece that everything revolves around... On the chessboard also the most vulnerable of all chess pieces, the one who always needs to have it from everyone else if he wants to survive... But at the same time the Chess King is also the one who keeps the awareness awake in others: "It's about making the most vulnerable ones safe. That is a main goal in the game of life ..." I thought it suited David... with how his life has developed: Life as a chess game... After all, in 1971 he had, as it turned out to me, a lot later, when then 24 year old Brian Radcliffe Eley won the British Chess Championship. And that in a 24 sets victory over the Czech-Slovak chess grandmaster Ludek Pachman. A sensation, then! An entire country that was proud of its young hero... Followed by first years of successful chess playing, chess lessons, online and offline coaching... but also by intrigue and power games within the British chess world... That's for him I think , been too much ahead... in those early years... That attention..., that constant pressure, ... It probably alienated him to some extent... or deprived him of the opportunity to find and understand himself beyond the chessboard, beyond the image that others had of him... It is certainly also what eventually made him stumble, and made him experience a large part of the world as an unsafe place ... At least in England he was unsafe, That's why he left his father- or motherland for reasons not to be judged here - to go into hiding in Amsterdam... Leaving his name "Brian" behind... Leaving his " Life of Brian" behind...... I have recently also been thinking a lot about that other Brian – that of Monty Python – Also a Brian who ends up in a game of forces and powers in which he himself at a given moment does not has more control over what happens in his life... In addition, that Brian (in Monthy Python's Life of Brian) is in a sense denied the right to be different from the outside image of others and become who he is... of inside... Our David or Brian was a downright tragic figure: Someone who had the idiom of Shakespeare's "As you like it" in his cultural baggage, where you can read that "All the world's a stage, and all men and women merely players..." And at the same time someone with the humor of Monty Python: "Always look at the bright s ide of life..." and "Life is but a shit – if you look at it..."--- Brian Radcliffe (Russel) Eley... In living and dying a man who could confuse others, but who – living in miserable circumstances himself – also regularly took care of others: He made contacts to the food bank for those who did not have contact themselves... He came up with proposals for alternative medication when my health was ailing... A wounded healer...somewhere, and a wonderful person Brian-David... If I wished anything for him... If I could speak to him one more time...I might quote from the songs of that old king David: The Psalms - attributed to King David... Like Psalm 23 - a well-known psalm, David would surely have known him... A Song of King David that responds in a strange way to desolation that comes with Job is also expressed in chapter 23... King David sings in that psalm:
The LORD is my shepherd,
I lack nothing.
He makes me rest in green meadows
and leads me to peaceful waters,
he gives me new strength
and lead me along safe paths
in honour of his name.
Though my way goes
through a dark valley,
I fear no danger,
because you are with me,
your rod and your staff,
they give me courage.
You invite me to the table
in front of the enemy,
you anoint my head with oil,
my cup overflows.
Happiness and grace follow me
all the days of my life,
I return to the house of the ETERNAL
to the length of days.---
May David's way... May Brian's way into the depths of existence, beyond the border of life and death, be surrounded and carried by these images. AMEN
Music Elgar - Nimrod
Story of Caroline Entrop:
David for us, his real name is Brian, came to visit us in 1988. I think he reported to a church and they didn't know what to do with him and my husband could help him. He had just come to the Netherlands from England and had to orientate himself here.
He had an argument with the chess federation and they had sued him and he then fled to the Netherlands. In that sense he was a fugitive of the law.
He was a computer expert and he could build his existence with that.
He's been fixing our computers for years. We had to use linux and windows was not done and google not at all. There was no discussion about that, it had to be done his way, which sometimes resulted in anger in me. He remained stoic. So I learned that getting angry didn't help. He meditated a lot and the next time he came it was as if nothing had happened. I sometimes felt guilty that I had become so angry. The computer was always repaired. By the way, he was right, but I didn't want to live that way without google. How it happened every time exactly the way he wanted it, I can't say exactly.
I think David went to school at Eton, a very well known school in England. In any case, it is the school where the Harry Potter film was shot.
David was very well-read and you can't bring up a subject without being able to talk about it.
- I've had a lot of advice about my garden, He knew all about roses,
- he was aware of politics and had an opinion about it and background information. he was listening to the bbc radio at 6 in the morning where the real information was displayed.
- he studied chemistry and researched everything in the field of food and medicine and had something to say about it.
- His knowledge of history was fabulous.
- He was a good piano player.
- He was a very good chess player
- A computer expert
- It is sad that he has not been able to use all this knowledge in his life.
He told about his life in England that he came home and an aunt had cut all his roses from his rose hedge. That while David knows everything about roses and that was a real hobby of his. I said you weren't furious. He reacted resignedly and shrugged.
On the TV in the early 90s on the BBC was a series, I believe "keeping up appearances". Anyway, it was about a very dominant woman with a husband who trudged after her. David said in passing she looks like my mother. He was an only child and it would not have been easy with such a mother and aunt. But if you kept asking, he changed the subject and I felt I shouldn't keep asking.
In any case, that wouldn't have made him very resilient. Because mother and aunt know everything better and do what they say. Perhaps this explains why he ran away from a lawsuit.
The boarding school with its intelligence must have been a liberation for him. †
He had many friends in the Netherlands, but they were separate circuits. An address list is missing, I do not know his friends nor did he want to give the addresses where he lived. He kept it all separate.
I think each of us experienced a different side of him depending on the context in which you met him.
He has moved a lot and his things are everywhere. His penultimate house has killed him. He lost weight and I can imagine that the landlady got worried. At the same time, he was very afraid of this landlord. The landlord drank and did not have a nice drink according to David. He was then pushed into a car that looked like an ambulance and drove to the OLVG and handed in there, with the announcement that he had corona. He was there for 9 days. He didn't have corona, but he did have a bacterium. He had no aftercare. He refused to go to a doctor and ask what exactly had happened in the hospital, he had not received any medication from the hospital, nor did he want to go to a doctor for that. Also when I asked what are you doing, he kept insisting that he knew what he had, namely a heart rhythm abnormality since he was 4 years old. His English sense of humour remained. When a doctor in the hospital asked him what year it was, he answered 2 ducks. You have to read comic books to understand that two ducks means 22.
He hardly ate, his stomach could not bear it. He also didn't want to take anything home for another meal. I couldn't say anything to him.
The last email I got from him was : I just took a few days holiday. The first part was relaxing, but the second part was not.:
I arrived back in not a very good state, but with a few ideas clarified.
Another email in a few days. I didn't respond to it.
4 days later an email, need anti mouse boxes, can you help.
I had no address, and 2 days later he passed away. On April 4.
I knew walking home away from me was strenuous for him, but realized afterwards that he probably couldn't come to me. He was probably too weakened.
I'm very glad that, when Sjuaat (name) didn't hear from him, he went after him and alerted the police so that he was found.
From Natalie, I heard he once said that he was nobody.
It's sad that it had to end like this. On the other hand, it is unbelievable how David has managed to survive in the Netherlands. He was no match for the aggression in our Western society, and had difficulty defending himself against aggression. In that sense, he was far too kind and vulnerable. From an early age there was no room to share his feelings. He was nobody to everyone, even I felt I shouldn't keep asking. With his intelligence he could make friends, but he couldn't show what something was doing to him.
Andreas Wöhle continuation
In these colorful and cross stories, something about David or Brian shines that is bigger and more open than anything that could be said in closing. And perhaps what Paul says applies to this: "Now we look in a blurred mirror, but soon we will be face to face. Now my knowledge is still limited, but soon I will know completely, as I myself am known..." May Brian - David experience that: to be known to the depth of existence. AMEN
Brian Radcliffe Eley's story has come to an end here for now. We hand over his body. "Dust art thou and to dust thou shalt return" But the memories remain. Therefore: Be blessed then, living and dead, And the peace of the Eternal, which is greater than all our thinking and reasoning, Guide us in our way. AMEN
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