I slept very badly the night before Nance’s funeral. I
mention this only because I believe it had an impact on the way in which I
experienced things that day. My father would probably say that when you’re
sleep-deprived, you’re not thinking straight, but I disagree. I believe that
there is a certain quality of experience that only comes to those who haven’t
slept. Sleeplessness, it seems to me, lends an edge to our experiences, tinging
them with new unknown colours, so that when I look back on the days following
sleepless nights, they appear to me as sharp shapes in vivid colours, whirling
around at breakneck pace on the hazy grey canvas of my mind. Those who are
sleep-deprived feel everything more deeply, more intensely; somehow, everything
is so much more real. Perhaps the intensity with which we have failed to live
in our dreams has leaked into our reality; perhaps we are aware that we are
teetering dangerously close to the edge of consciousness. Whatever the reason,
our minds are dominated by raw emotion, by pure feeling. Rationality flees from
us, and with it, the restrictions which bind the rest of the human realm,
anchoring them in a dull world of banal and everyday possibilities. And who is
to say that life lived according to raw emotion is not the better life? Who is
to say that the sleep-deprived are not the only ones to see the world as it
truly is? Tossed around on a rough sea of raw emotion and pure feeling; thus
was I the day of Nance’s funeral.
We entered the
house by the back door not to be impertinent or to lay claim to more
familiarity than was due to us, but because that was what we were used to doing.
I don’t believe that prior to the day of the funeral, I had ever before entered
or left their house through the front door. In fact, it was rather easy to
forget that the house even possessed a front door, simply because it was
situated beyond the area I usually saw when we dropped by. I suppose somewhere,
in the back of my mind, I must have known that there was more to the house; a
front door, bedrooms, a bathroom, but for me, Walter and Nance’s house didn’t
really exist beyond the three rooms in which we would be received. The tiny
utility room-come-back entrance hall, which barely deserves to be counted as a
room, containing nothing but an old fridge, various pairs of shoes and some
umbrellas. The small but cosy and functional kitchen, which in my eyes served
simply as a store for the alcoholic drinks which would be brought out as a
present for father every Christmas, and as a passage through to the room which
is most familiar to me, the essence of their house as I knew it: the
living-room. A gas fire, television in the corner, two easy chairs, one sofa
and many cabinets filled with ornaments; this was the world of Walter and
Nance, a simple room which hosted many hours of amusement, laughter and
indulgent smiles for the young girl who lived over the wall.
Every Christmas
Eve, my mother and I would visit all of the close neighbours, carrying with us
boxes of chocolates and biscuits, and Christmas cards in which I often declared
my love for the reader in painfully long-drawn-out paragraphs. I loved this
tradition, and continue to cherish the memories of it; it just felt so
wonderfully festive, so perfectly resembling something in a Jane Austen novel.
Walter and Nance were always the last to be visited, because they were always
my favourites, and (I’m guessing) those of both my parents. I loved to sit and
listen as Walter talked about his days working in the shipyard in Belfast, and
Nance explained how she came to be called Nance, her real name being Agnes – a
story which I’m angry with myself for forgetting. They gave wonderful presents
too, always far too much – having no children of their own, I think they
relished this chance to spoil a young girl, whilst I relished the addition of
several more parcels under the Christmas tree. Looking back, I hope I showed
them how grateful I was. I think I did, but it’s always difficult, once someone
is gone, not to wish that you had been more explicit, just to make sure that
they knew. I hope you’ll know now, Nance. I’m ever so grateful.
We let ourselves
in through the back door, first my father, then me, then my mother. The small
kitchen was filled with strange faces, relatives of Walter and Nance whom I had
never met before, and will probably never meet again, but whose grief I had
come to share for a few hours on this sultry Friday in June. Father progressed
to the door between the kitchen and living-room, greeting Walter and Nance’s
sister Marjorie, whilst Mother hung back, introducing herself to the strangers.
I, therefore, ended up loitering awkwardly halfway between my two parents,
unsure of which to join, eventually resolving to join neither and remain in my
exposed position in the middle of the kitchen. I had expected there to be a
short preliminary service in the house, as there had been at my grandfather’s
funeral, but all our time there was spent organising who was to lift the coffin
at which points, with Father being unexpectedly roped in to help organise this,
despite not really knowing who anybody was.
After a few
minutes, Mother and I made our way into the hall, where the undertakers were
coming and going, getting ready to set off. I was rather shocked to notice that
one of them was a boy who had previously been in my class at school; I wondered
at a boy of 19 having chosen an occupation in which it is necessary to deal
with death on a daily basis, particularly as I myself had chosen not to see
Nance’s body, just as almost five years previously, I had chosen not to see
that of my grandfather. At first, it seemed to me strange that someone so young
had already become accustomed to death, but then I realised that in reality,
death is a fact with which every mortal must contend every day of our lives. I
recalled a friend telling me that his earliest memory is being told of the
death of his unborn sisters, and how we had revelled in the poetry of the fact
that death was what began his memory, and will be what ends it. In that moment,
it occurred to me that death never leaves any of us – it is always there,
lurking in the shadows of every one of life’s joyful experiences, as well as in
the painful ones. And I realised that none of our throats will ever truly be
free from the icy grip of Death’s long, bony fingers.
We were all about
to leave the house when the hallway phone began to ring and was answered by one
of the younger women. In the other three rooms, the chatter of the mourners
swiftly died away, and there descended upon the house a stifling silence, so
strong that it seemed to be bearing down upon us, pressing against us from
every side. It was the silence of a courtroom waiting for an inevitable but
unpleasant verdict, as all eyes turned towards the receiver and every ear
attempted to discern from the neutral expression of the lady listening to it
who could possibly have thought it appropriate to call at just this moment.
“I’m sorry, there’s a funeral at the moment” was spoken crisply into the
receiver, which was promptly replaced. She raised her head, and seeming to
perceive the silence which had become so unbearably repressive that I thought I
might scream, or faint, or do both or neither, delivered the verdict we had
been waiting for. “Insurance company”. Heads were shaken, tongues clicked in
sympathy, and finally, we could proceed with our lives, or at least, with the
process of burying our friend and neighbour.
(To be continued...)
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