Rowan Komachi Otaki Eisler (10 Nov 1958 - 4 Jul 2016)

My good bye to Rowan is in my heart, with memories of a beautiful woman, a faithful friend, and simply, just an amazing human being. I loved her so much.

Meg Simcox wrote:

I have a vivid mental picture of walking with Rowan up into Mum’s wildflower garden. Someone was talking, but Rowan stopped, looked down and pointed wordlessly with her toe at a clump of white violets growing in the grass. She seemed to drink in their exquisite, tiny beauty, and then walked on without comment. Somehow, that image is Rowan to me, timeless.

July 19th 2017


By the Millenium Bridge.



Flow with the water,

Swirl over stones and rush in rivulets,

Linger in sunny pools and meander through swaying reeds,

Sidle with fishes in deep secret places.

Rush joyously in turbulence, dashing, splashing past bridges and towers

Knowing and feeling the true centre of the great city's heart.

And speeding, speeding on your way

Dash to the sea, foam with waves and weeds,

Splash to the heavens, travelling on gull's wing

And sing to the clouds, sing and ride the tempest

Astride the world's breast,

And be at one with all things,

Be at peace with all things,

Our dear darling.

I have special memories of all you lovely Otakis - but I have two special ones of Rowan. Firstly, when she played a Mozart piano concerto with the Medway Youth Orchestra in the Central Hall in Chatham - I still remember her wonderful composure, and Alan, who was sitting very close to me, clapping at the end and saying out loud 'well done Chich!' which was an understatement really. The second is how stunning she looked in the white strapless dress that she wore for her twenty-first birthday party.
Rosemary Cordingley (nee Craig)

5th April 2017

in St. Margaret's Cemetery, Rochester.

I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's history
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns,
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the Spirit, clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the Spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

What is precious, is never to forget
The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth.
Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light
Nor its grave evening demand for love.
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog, the flowering of the Spirit.

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields,
See how these names are fêted by the waving grass
And by the streamers of white cloud
And whispers of wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire's centre.
Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun
And left the vivid air signed with their honour.

Stephen Spender

To Dear Lottie.
I’ve never met you but I knew your mother for 45 years and so I thought I’d write to you and put my memories of her down for you to look at over the years if you would like to. Perhaps your aunts and family will explain some of the things I have written until you can understand everything yourself. I hope you won’t mind your family and friends being able to read this too. Although you are the most important person now (and of course always will be) and everyone’s focus is on you, when sad things happen, it is good to share our feelings with those we love and who love us.
I was nine when we moved to Rochester and St Margaret’s church instantly became synonymous with the Otaki family. Thursday night choir practices, which were basically for (and run by) the Otaki family and a few others (Denise, of course) stand out in my memory clearer now than ever. The church’s smells; ecclesiastical damp, musty knee-dented hassocks, Brasso (my father loved to clean all the brass in the church every Friday morning), beeswax wood polish and dust burning on the electric fires as they tried in vain to keep us warm in the gloom.
In the 1970’s the area around the Cathedral and the school still carried loud echoes of the Victorian City that Dickens chronicled and dramatised a hundred years earlier. It was populated by eccentric and unusual characters, the impoverished, rough remnants of the fading dock yard in Chatham rubbing along, sometimes uneasily with the middle class, comfortable and genteel Rochester cathedral set. I went to the Kings school and found myself as a little boy, on the fringe of this latter group trying to fit in. It was nothing like Sheppey where I had lived until then. The Otakis were at the centre of this world, Lockington House was a time warped salon and at the very heart of the that extraordinary place was Chich.
She was remarkable and unique.
When people are young and lovely and others turn in the streets to stare at them, those who (are lucky enough to?) draw the stares are often indignant and say things like, ‘I want to be thought of for my brains and talents and not my looks’, but actually the world is full of interesting people with big brains and loads of talents. We can exercise our brains and develop our talents but true beauty is far rarer. All but the exceptionally beautiful grow invisible to the world as the years pass and no one notices their presence in the street any more. Not so with Chich. I realised even at nine years old that she was exceptionally beautiful. She was so beautiful that I (who lacked natural confidence) often found I couldn’t really talk to her properly, I was too in awe. I hope she forgave my gaucheness back then. I last met her at Gavin William’s funeral. I saw her across the packed cathedral and her poise was still total, her beauty undimmed. Even as she grew frailer she stood out in this crowd as she did in even the most glamourous crowd. In spite of her illness, she was still very beautiful. Long live beauty. Chich’s beauty.
Of course, she wasn’t just beautiful, she had very many great talents, a sharp and deep intellect, and she was self-analytical and self-critical. These attributes were both a blessing and curse to her. She had gifts in super abundance.
Life is lived forward and understood backwards and I think no one knew that more clearly than she did. We do things that we think we understand at the time but then, quickly we realise we made a mistake, or missed an opportunity. We choose too often to open the wrong doors and walk past the right ones. We examine our actions, evaluate them, seem to learn from our mistakes and then repeat them all over again! But that is what being human is essentially all about, it is not about attaining perfection, or riches or fame or fortune or ticking down bucket lists, it’s about the endless recapitulation of the mundane and how we show grace under pressure. Chich’s life was a masterclass in this and she brilliantly demonstrated this grace throughout her life. She turned experience into wisdom. Whilst she could rail against the ‘slings and arrows’, her grace and stoicism were world class.
A very long time ago I remember her at Lockington music nights, when as young boy, I had no music in my life, she played the piano beautifully in what I thought of as the sophisticated ‘parlour’ whilst the portraits of all the girls stared down from the walls and the local elite gathered round to listen in hushed silence. A few years later I remember teenaged times with her as the centre of attention at the old KSR swimming pool messing about with local Rochester friends for hours on end, in what seemed like guaranteed hot summers year after year. Later still, when largely thanks to her friendship I had discovered music, or at least singing, I remember going to ‘the Rochester Club’ and singing carols in small groups at Christmas time, feeling grown up and getting very drunk. I remember her helping me with sight reading tests before I went to choral scholarship trials and patiently trying to teach me Lieder. I’m sorry I wasn’t a better student. Then she was a music agent then Wilde’s Salome, and had she a modelling contact. I remember her singing in the Tallis Chamber Choir in the 1990’s and then turning from choir singer into serious soloist. I remember her Pamina at Gavin’s 60th birthday Magic Flute in 2004 and how she became a completely new person on stage, a true artist, one of those who found a new way of being alive when under the lights, and she transcended, just for a short while, the material world, as artists do and made it better for the rest of us.
It is not an exaggeration to say her life had more than just a touch of the operatic about it and now she transcends that material world not just for a duration of an opera or an aria, but for ever. It fits.
So normally when people say of those who have died that they were, ‘remarkable’ and ‘unique’, they actually mean that there was nothing of note at all to say about them. In Chich’s case though, I can use those words in their most literal sense and with full justification. I have never met nor will ever meet anyone remotely like her. She really was remarkable and unique. Her premature, sad, protracted and grim death makes us all the poorer but like all true artists whose life and work become intertwined it also makes us reflect on our own lives even from beyond the grave. She is doing that for us now. I am immensely sad and troubled that my old and dear friend has died but she will continue to affect and influence those who loved her and whose lives she touched so profoundly.
So dear Lottie, I have gone on too long already, and although your life will have been changed so much by her sad death, things will carry on. Please know that she was greatly loved by so many people and that she will live on forever in our memories and your memory. What lives in our ‘inner worlds’ is ours for ever and so she can never fully be taken away even though you will miss her in ways you won’t yet be able to realise. She made a difference to those who knew her and that is the mark of a life well led. I really hope I’ll be able to meet you and that I won’t be too old or dottie when we do. But as we know, life is full of surprises and nothing can be taken for granted, so if we don’t meet soon please accept my deepest sympathies in the meanwhile. Knowing your mother has been one of greatest privileges one could ever have. Thank you for listening Lottie, and thank you dearest Chich for being my friend.
With all my love

Teehan