A Letter From the Graveyard
Friday 17th of April 2020
On a cliff, overlooking the sea, that’s where they’ll bury me.
Under the rocks and salt clay, under ferns and heavy hanging trees.
Giving back to the land, my home, the ocean that shaped me.
Denis Peter Austrie was buried today. I watched a live stream of the funeral.
There’s this sense, acknowledgement, awareness, of knowing how to feel and how I feel. There’s the expectation of feeling, but when have I ever done what’s expected? I’ll say that I understand more now, and I’ll explain what I mean.
Last night I had a rant about flowers.
An arrangement of flowers were ordered on my family’s behalf because we couldn’t be at the funeral in person. I understand that this is a normal social convention, placing flowers on the dead, (traditionally to mask the smell) but I didn’t understand why. What difference does laying flowers on a grave make, the dead can’t care?
But, I watched the funeral, the coffin going in the hole, with some effort, the rocky soil being thrown on top, the shovels moving like hands smoothing out a sheet, tucking him in, laying him to rest. Then the flowers, dressing the grave like an altar of celebration, and I understood.
It’s showing respect to the body because you can no longer show respect for the soul. It’s honouring him, his struggles, his life, his now time of rest. It reminded me of this:
“She was not a person but a whole kind of a person, the ones who crossed the ocean, who brought with us to a America the villages of Russia and Lithuania – and how we struggled, and how we fought, for the family, for the Jewish home, so that you would not grow up ‘here’, in this strange place, in the melting pot where nothing melted… because she carried the old world on her back across the ocean, in a boat, and she put it down on Grand Concourse Avenue, or in Flatbush, and she worked that earth into your bones… You can never make that crossing that she made, for such Great Voyages in this world do not anymore exist. But every day of your lives the miles that voyage between that place and this one you cross… In you that journey is… Pretty soon… all the old will be dead.” – ‘Angels in America’, Tony Kushner.
Nothing like that was said in this funeral. He was described as a husband, brother, father and friend. Not the man who crossed an ocean to support his family, who carried with him love and hate for Dominica, who brought with him that cultural uncertainty, that void of being out of place to places like Southmead, St Pauls, St Werburghs and Easton, the Windrush generation, abandoned by the country that called them and the country they left behind.
I never knew him, I only knew what he showed, the good and the bad of it. The past was always something not to be touched, the present moment and the future were all that mattered.
I wish the past had been something allowed, maybe then I would have known him better, he must have lived a whole life.
Such a cliche, to want to know someone when they’re dead, you suddenly want to go back and change things. Let’s be clear, I don’t, not really. I’m just observing, that’s what I do, isn’t it?
Am I sad? Is the child in me sad that the grandfather who always let me win at cards is dead? If I say I’m sad, would it just be because I’m supposed to be? Why don’t I feel things like normal people? What am I feeling? Glad he’s at rest, sad for the people left behind who mourn and miss him, who’ve missed out on more time with him, and I don’t include myself in that.
But I am sorry I wasn’t brave enough to crack through that wall, that temper, and find out who he was underneath it.
He never changed with old age, he just got more angry and that anger was lashed out in all directions, like a boot to the back of the neck.
Death is a weird thing. It makes you remember what you want from life and want to run towards it.
They’ll be here until sunset, making sure I’m at rest,
Their brother, father, uncle and friend,
Safe and still in the ground.
The priests and attendants will look on in awe,
But this is how it’s done.
Not a handful of dirt thrown on to a coffin, then back to the house for drinks,
No, they’ll make sure the dead are buried properly,
With bare hands and feet if need be.
Off come the jackets, ties loosened or tossed to the ground,
Take positions around the hole and begin to fill the spaces left.
Sweating in the sun, shovelling in the dirt until the grave is full,
This is how it’s done.
I’ll be laid to rest by my family, not strangers who will never know my secret names.
And the women will bring the drinks,
They’ll gather, sit and stand and wet my head,
Because this is how it’s done,
This is how we say goodbye.
I’ve been feeling like Grimes lately, in the video of ‘Delete Forever’. I’m the observer, sat above it all, watching everything, feeling but not really acknowledging it. How can one be a dispassionate god if one feels too much? That was only kind of a joke.
I’ve always been the observer, the observer of all that’s around me, soaking it in. It’s like being an alien sent to study humans, that’s what it feels like anyway.
Maybe somewhere along the way I decided I’m less likely to get hurt if I just stand aside and watch.
Later:
This is going to be a contradiction, but I’m capable of holding polar opposites within me, I figured out something. I figured out how I’m feeling by going the long way round.
I was scared to go to bed and I couldn’t figure out why. Long anxiety attack later, I’m feeling vulnerable. As it turns out I wasn’t just scared of my grandfather, there was also this awareness that others were frightened of him. Even thought I was scared of him, I was also safe with him, because he would hurt anyone who tried to hurt me.
Anyway, I feeling scared and vulnerable tonight because I suppose it’s sunk in, I’ve lost a defender, a person that kept me safe from others, just not himself.
He was on my side when my dad didn’t talk to me for two years, who’s going to take my side now? Ridiculous, isn’t it? Especially considering he stopped being on my side years ago. It’s funny what come up in the middle of the night.
