The Huddersfield Daily Examiner

HOLLYWOOD star Sean Bean will attend the memorial service being held for campaigning journalist Adrian Sudbury next week.

The Sheffield-born actor, 49, will give a reading at the service at Sheffield Cathedral on October 16.

The service, starting at 2pm, will celebrate the life of Adrian, who died of leukaemia in August, aged just 27.

Examiner reporter Adrian, who lived in Sheffield, had spent his last months campaigning to raise awareness about bone marrow donation – particularly among 17 and 18-year-olds.

The achievements of his Sign Up For Sudders campaign will be highlighted at the service.

Sheffield United fan Sean – known for his roles in Sharpe and Lord Of The Rings – will read an extract from a poem entitled On Death, by Indian poet Khalil Gibran.

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read the poem below the cut

On Death
Kahlil Gibran

You would know the secret of death.
But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?
The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light.
If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life.
For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.

In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond;
And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring.
Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.
Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour.
Is the shepherd not joyful beneath his trembling, that he shall wear the mark of the king?
Yet is he not more mindful of his trembling?

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.