Notes For A Eulogy by Jaime Gill
May 14, 2026
*****Henry Eric Jameson Rowley: 1955—2024.
*****Loved innuendo, so may have died age 69 intentionally. Pause for laughter).
*****Famous actor, famously generous friend, infamously extravagant party host.
*****Gregarious, gossipy, sometimes garrulous.
*****My lifelong companion, together four decades.
*****Quote Tennyson’s “In Memoriam” here? No. Beautiful but stodgy. Also, not sure it IS better to have loved and lost.
*****Auden’s “Funeral Blues? Clichéd since that damned wedding movie, but Henry didn’t notice clichés. “My North, South, East, West.” Yes. Henry occupied my whole world.
*****Met in 1974, performing “Oh! What A Lovely War” in rundown theatre in outer London.
*****Our first date was my first ever. Five years earlier, it would have been illegal.
*****He took me to Greenwich Planetarium. I was half-terrified, half-excited. In the dark, his fingers found mine. On the ceiling above, celestial images swirled and a tinny, recorded voice described earth and moon locked together. But not forever.
*****Henry was the earth. Expansive, beautiful, explosive with life. Sometimes confused himself with centre of universe.
*****I was his moon. Complete with occasional dark side, often eclipsed.
*****After, Henry took me to my first gay bar. Everyone stared at him. Two men glanced my way, smirking and whispering. I knew they wondered why he’d picked me. Wanted to say I didn’t know either. (NOTE: make self-deprecating and funny, not pitiful.)
*****Our whole life together like that. His personality so big its gravity pulled people towards him. I only ever attracted people because I was in his orbit.
*****His acting career bloomed, whisking him from shabby stage to silver screen. My career waxed and waned… mostly waned. (Remember: keep funny.)
*****When he got his Oscar nomination, I watched him graciously lose from six thousand miles away, on TV. Times different then. If he’d taken me, his career would have flatlined before the curtains fell. He brought me back a gift—an Oscars dinner menu autographed by Elizabeth Taylor. She misspelt my name. Henry hadn’t noticed.
*****He really was generous with his life and light. What is the precise difference between kindness and pity?
*****Could be so cold in his shadow.
*****Henry loved trivia, so here are two facts.
*****First. The moon is moving away from earth at exact same speed fingernails grow. In this universe, nothing stays together forever. Slowly creeping separation is more painful than the sudden variety. Love cools with every new millimetre of distance, resentment creeps in the gaps.
*****Second fact: moon and earth were once one body, part of same giant glittering gas cloud. Will also die together, incinerated as the sun swells in its death throes.
*****Henry is dead. But I am not.
*****Henry is gone, and all life with him.
*****What to do with the years left? Could create a life of my own. I want to. But it’s so late. I’m old. That dying sun’s reaching for me too.
*****Henry will be missed by everyone lucky enough to know him. And millions who weren’t.
*****Who will miss me? Who will write my eulogy?
Jaime Gill is a British-born writer living in Cambodia, where he works and volunteers for nonprofits across Southeast Asia. He reads, runs, boxes, travels, writes, and occasionally socialises. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in publications including Missouri Review, Sun Magazine, The Forge, Fractured Lit, Litro, Trampset, and Oyster River Pages. He’s won awards including a Bridport Prize, Luminaire Prose Award, and New Millennium Writers Award, and been a finalist for the Bath Short Story Award and Oxford Flash Fiction Award. He’s also a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. He’s currently writing a novel and more short stories. Learn more and sign up for his newsletter at www.jaimegill.com or follow him on www.x.com/jaimegill, www.instagram.com/mrjaimegill or https://bsky.app/profile/jaimegill.bsky.social.
Notes For A Eulogy won second place in The Bridport Prize and was shortlisted for The Smokelong Grand Micro
Photo by Dmytro Koplyk at Pexels
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