Ash
I have found the writing of this eulogy a very difficult and emotional task. Like most of you, I expect Ash to simply turn up sometime with this amazing story about something crazy, like living in the belly of a whale like Jonah, for three months. It was just that Ash was a bit like that. And so it has been really hard to actually stop, sit, and write something down. But I have slowly, like all of you who walked the beaches, went out to sea in your boats, scoured the headlands, have had to stop, and grudgingly accept , and somehow begin the painful journey forward without him.
To Graham and Colleen, I am so sorry that you have to farewell your son. It is not the correct order of things, and every parent here understands your immense grief. To Mel, who lost a brother, to Liz who lost her soulmate, and to Aisha and Declan – I just don’t have the words to help you. But if it is of some `consolation to you all, I want to speak of the enormous admiration that everyone who shared some air with Ash had for him. And I want to talk about karate.
Ash wasn’t just a karate fanatic. He could be considered a fanatic in everything he did as you have no doubt heard by now. But karate can be an esoteric world where few people really venture into the heart of, but Ash waded in body and soul. He started with us at age 15 but had already trained for a few years. My enduring memory of Ash is his incredible dreadlocks of course, but they came a few years after he started. But Ash was a special student. Even in 2003 ( and I don’t know why I kept his black belt essay all these years) he already had developed a deeper commitment to training than most.
He wrote “ By black belt, each student should have developed an intimate system of conversation with their own body. For me, the physical side of karate is a constant process, in which I am always trying to push my body as far as possible in all situations”. Sound like the Ash we know? He never deviated from this view over the next 20 years.
Ash finished his easy with a remarkable observation for a 23 year old. He wrote that “ Black belt means many things to me, but also nothing. Black belt is one of the many stepping stones in the wide karate river. It is necessary to reach the other side. But on its own, it is nothing”.
Ash embarked after 2005 on an adventure that lasted about 5 years, where he travelled the world with Liz, and dived as deeply as he could into the world of martial arts.
Capoeira in Brazil
Karate in Japan
Muay Thai in Phuket
2 months full time training in Wudang in China
Mixed Martial arts in Ireland and a period of time training with a crazy Georgian called Bacho where in every session he was pushed to breaking point.
Ash had a boxing match in London, trained with full contact Kyokushin fighters, and yet took the time to do Kalari in India. Liz and Ash explored yoga in depth together, and Ash even slotted in some freediving in Thailand in 2011.
I will never understand in truth, why Ash settled back with us to train after living and training like that for so long. But I am the richer for it, because for over ten years, Ash and I were able to train one on one together at my place or his, out in the open, and explore together the richness of the thing we were chasing. Mostly we were “peeing in the wind” because at the level of technique we were seeking it was all a bit pseudophysical, which for an engineer was a bit of a paradox. Ash wrote a beautiful piece called “Physics Fu” where he described all the forces at work to produce power, and then concluded that you just had to train hard. For an engineer, he was an artist. For a pragmatist he was also a dreamer. We could discuss the mechanical breakdown of a physical motion, but yet marvel at the way it all felt quite different depending on whether you were facing the garden or the water, the sun or the shade.
There was this Ash who I had so much fun with… and we did… we fooled around , we joked, we lampooned ourselves and we played karate like two children in a sandpit, and I so looked forward to those Friday mornings when he would wander around the corner of the house at 6.30 in the morning in those same colourful boardshorts and a t shirt that looked like one of Declans. Sandy once said, “Hey nice T-shirt Ash” and he looked at it and said “Really?” “Yeah, where did you get it?” “Oh, off the top of the pile.” We did some mad things, we’d hit each other till we got it just right, one of us flattened on the ground looking up going, “That’s it! That’s the pressure point!” . We were crash test dummies in our research for better technique and glimpses of deeper understanding always came out of these morning sessions. For me this was gold, and I assumed it would last forever, or at least until I couldn’t keep up, and I would eventually ask him to carry on without me. That’s the cycle of things. And we never identified our relationship. Was I his teacher, a useful elder, his big brother, his friend. I was all of them, but it was never declared between us. It was more like “ yeah, see ya next week if I’m around,… yeah, see ya”. Like everyone here, I wish I had known it wasn’t forever, because I would have been more attentive, more appreciative, more grateful. I would have told him how important he was to me and to us.
Ash graded to Shihan. This means master teacher, and the rank is a rare one. For his Shihan essay he wrote that he had changed his thinking. Instead of being a “keeper of the style”, he decided that he wanted to be one of the “keepers of the spirit of the style”. And then set out to do that, accepting the role of a senior teacher, and always teaching or offering to teach my black belt class if I was away. We spoke often of the legacy we were trying to impart, and how our work together was so important in shaping the next generation of this beautiful art that we call Chitokai. We had so much work still to do, and like all of you feel, he has left us much too soon.
But your work continues Ash, in our hearts and our memories. Remember the way he would light up at every black belt grading – where at last, he could see you push yourself to the limit and then beyond, because he felt that the capacity to do that defined you as a warrior. He loved the 20 bouts of sparring and he would be a relentless terrior to the black belt aspirants, especially any who made the mistake of looking like they were at all comfortable.
Remember the beautiful motion he always showed when the black belts performed the higher forms. Where I was a gorilla, he was a cheeky spider monkey, and everyone was inspired by his amazing body and mind control, his projection of consciousness in the moment and his flexibility. My favourite video of Ash is the one where he performs and elaborate Kungfu form on cobblestones in Wudang, long dreds flowing and amazing technical mastery.
Remember the desire Ash expressed in 2003 to refine that mind and body conversation. Ash had a lifelong thirst to find that perfection of motion where you could harness that symbiosis of body and mind – we all long for this too as it is part of being self aware, but Ash was unique to me in that he craved it and was prepared to do the hard yakka to find it. He tried parkour some years ago, until he felt he was wrecking his body. I recall trying foiling with him and he was frustrated and fascinated that he couldn’t actually grasp it straight away. And I’m sure others here have many tales of Ash and his feats of endurance, or what appeared to be the pursuit of pain for pains sake.
Ash loved to do things his way, at his pace. He could not fathom why people could live their lives with their heads down checking their social media feed, when with eyes up they could be checking out the blue sky. For a guy who went at such a mad pace, it is another measure of him that in a road rage incident he encountered, some guy was so furious at how slow Ash was driving as he meandered home from morning training that he pulled him over and threatened him, until he saw Ash’s black belt and pair of sai on the seat next to him, and meekly withdrew. If he didn’t like a thing he just went the other way, because he felt you should follow your own compass.
Ash once commented to me that he wasn’t sure that the karate we did was rigorous enough anymore, so I challenged him that he couldn’t say that until he had tried Brazilian Jiujitsu, and that started a whole new direction for his passion for difficult endeavours. Once again, it was an art you just can’t master no matter how good you think you have become, and for Ash this was a perfect recipe for a person such as him. He made such an impact on the wrestling class, because like everything else he did, he did it with humour, humility and an insatiable curiosity to find out how it worked.
Ash left an indelible mark on the people he played amongst, but I think he would have never registered that. Everyone loved his karate classes. They were fun, and light-hearted, and always a new technique was introduced with “this is the way I do it. But I don’t know if its right”.
A famous wrestler once said, in his last speech,
“Every man’s heart one day beats its final beat. And if what that man did in all his life makes the blood pulse through the body of others, and makes them bleed deeper and something larger than life, then his essence, his spirit, will be immortalized by the storytellers, by the loyalty, by the memory of those who honour him, and make whatever the man did live forever”.
So how do we honour him? By keeping the memory of him alive. By having a go at the challenges in your life– by trying until it really hurts, and then trying some more, because here now is the moment where you really find yourself and feel your humanity. Live your life with the curiosity and wonderment of a child and see the possibility to learn something new in all the hurdles you face.
Ash wouldn’t like this kind of ceremony. He would prefer we all go on a hard run, or do 100 pushups and then, 100 more, anything other than a bunch of people wasting precious time and energy getting all sad about him.
But we have a right to this Ash. We have to come to terms with you leaving us, and allow us to take you more deeply into our hearts, to reflect on the gift that was you.
Like many of you here, I see Ash everywhere- in all my ah ha moments while training – and he would expect me to go on without him- I look across to catch his eye, expecting a moment of mutual recognition that we are on to something, and I expect to continue to do this for the rest of my life. There is a space on or mat for you that simply cannot be replaced. Even in our recent trip to Japan, my daughter Anna and Abi refused to take his spot, because for all of us he was still there.
When I am in the sea I am close to you, and when I see the moon over the water I feel the sadness of the loss of you.
Graeme, Colleen, Mel, Liz, Aisha and Declan, know that your son, your brother, your husband, your dad, was greatly admired by everyone he touched. You can be so proud of his achievements, and the deep imprint he left on the lives of others. There was a great outpouring of grief when we lost Ash. This may be of no consolation to you now in your unfathomable suffering, but you surely know that Ash lived a life to its fullest, that he gave his utmost in everything he did. Abraham Lincoln said “Its not the years in your life that count, it’s the life in your years”, and he might as well have been referring to Ash.
We feel its so unfair that a man of such energy, such zest for life, knowledge to share, creativity and vision was suddenly torn from us at the age of 43 – but Ash didn’t waste time in his mortal space – he lived life as he wanted – and I can only hope that in his last moments he was going hard doing a thing he enjoyed, and thinking, in that oh crikey moment, “mmmm, this is interesting”. We had often joked together that this was the preferred way to go, if you have to go. He would certainly be the most surprised of all of us if he knew it was to be his last moment.
The karate black belts have gathered here to say goodbye to their Shihan, their master instructor. They are in uniform because it honours him, and they will perform something that he will understand very well, and we hope you are ok that we share it with you.
I say the warriors farewell to you Ash “Ave atque vale” – I salute you and I say goodbye.