On the afternoon of 6th October 2003, at the funeral service of George Odlum in Mindoo Phillip Park, with some three thousand mourners in near silent attendance, the prime minister of St. Vincent & the Grenadines Ralph Gonsalves revealed he had twice visited Odlum before his death.
“I was at his hospital bed on the nights of September 23 and 25. The first time I visited, nothing could’ve prepared me for George’s physical condition. He was gaunt, emaciated, incredibly thin. Cancer truly is a debilitating disease.” Yet there was in George’s countenance a tranquility, a quiet calm and a transcendental dignity that put the shocked visitor immediately at ease.
George’s smile was wry, and his voice, though audible, was weak, Gonsalves recalled. “Upon his sight of me he smiled, then whispered, ‘I can go home now. I have seen the last of the Mohicans.’ He was referring to the fact that after him I am the last of the traduced radicals.” On the occasion Gonsalves had stayed with his friend for over an hour.They spoke about many things that Gonsalves promised his Mindoo Phillip Park audience he would one day write about. George was “lucid, his mind alert although he body was wasted.” He reminded Gonsalves that at their mutual friend Tim Hector’s funeral Gonsalves had read ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ that speaks of time, death, beauty, nature and human suffering. Now the poem had greater significance than ever before.
Incredibly, Gonsalves acknowledged, the moribund George Odlum “recited the poem word for word, without prompting, never once stumbling.” The verse that meant the most to him in his final minutes was: “‘Darkling I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, call’d him some soft names in many a mused rhyme, to take into the air my quiet breath; now more than ever seems rich to die, to cease upon the midnight with no pain, while though art pouring thy soul abroad in such ecstasy! Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—to thy high requiem become a sod.’”
Gonsalves asked his fast departing friend to reveal his favorite line from the 23rd Psalm. George did not respond and Gonsalves took a guess: “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.” George smiled, the Vincie prime minister remembered in the mournful quiet of the park where even the birds had no songs left to sing, nodded his assent: “Before I go to my god,” he said ever so softly, “I would like you, me and Kenny [Anthony] to pray together.”
Early the next morning, having gauged when the CARICOM leaders would’ve concluded their breakfast meeting with the President of the United States, Gonsalves telephoned Anthony and “reflected with him on my hospital visit the night before.” Gonsalves informed the then prime minister of Saint Lucia of Odlum’s dying wish to pray with him and “urged him to return home the next day.” Despite that he was not himself feeling well, Kenny Anthony readily agreed. “There was no reluctance,” Gonsalves assured his audience, “no bitterness at all.”
Not long afterward, “as if by a miracle, George wrestled with the oxygen tubes. When someone removed them, George opened his eyes. Upon seeing Kenny at his bedside, he beamed with pure joy. His face radiated the pleasure of a dying father upon seeing his estranged son in whom he was now well pleased. Small conversations took place. The hatchet of division and discord was fully buried.”
–(Taken from Lapses & Infelicities by Rick Wayne)
