from the Daily Telegraph, in Australia:
Heath Ledger's fond farewellBy Michelle Cazzulino
February 11, 2008 12:00am
AS the sun stained the horizon pink, they shed their mourning clothes and ran towards the ocean, finally outpacing the grief that had engulfed them.
Some might have observed that it was too soon for this - that all the laughing, shrieking and splashing should have been reserved for an altogether more appropriate occasion.
But as they gathered at the shoreline, arm in arm, a sense of serenity settled over the group. As the day gradually drew to a close, their grip on the past loosened but their own ties grew stronger.
As one mourner noted, it's what Heath Ledger would have wanted: an intensely private send-off from those who knew him best.
In the centre of the group, her swollen eyes hidden behind sunglasses, Ledger's former fiancee Michelle Williams sat gazing across the ocean.
Of those gathered, Williams had shouldered the heaviest burden, mourning the loss of her two-year-old daughter's father at four services held in two continents in the space of less than three weeks.
Hours earlier, she had paid tribute to Ledger at a funeral attended by 10 members of his immediate family, reading Shakespeare's sonnet Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer's Day in his honour.
Later, as the waves on Perth's Cottesloe Beach lapped around her funeral dress, the mourners formed a protective huddle around her, as though their bodies might insulate her from grief.
At one point, a few young men started to rally: "The sun goes down on our love," one said. "But it will never go down on our Heathy," others replied.
When the horizon finally swallowed the light, they cheered, clapped and smiled through tears.
As they turned to retrieve crumpled suits and dresses that lay in on the sand, there was a sense that their heartache had momentarily been healed.
The sun would rise again tomorrow, and somehow they would find a way to it together.
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23192103-5001031,00.html?from=mostpop
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