My mother, father and I were some of the last to leave the
house. We joined the others, who had formed a line in front of the wall which
separates Walter and Nance’s house from the one we used to live in. The line
consisted mostly of elderly people with stooped backs and shaky hands, looking
as if they were themselves not much further from death than the contents of the
coffin which would shortly be wheeled past us. An army of the dying, lining up
to salute the dead.
I looked at Walter, standing near the head of
the line, flanked by his brother on one side Marjorie on the other, and what I
saw shocked me. Walter had been gravely ill for quite some time - he became ill
at the same time as my grandfather, who suffered for three years and died five
years ago. Before then, he had been an active man, but he had faded badly, and
I confess that when I looked in his direction, I had expected to see a broken
and emaciated old man. Instead, I saw something else entirely. I saw possibly
the greatest display of strength that I’ve ever seen. Not only was he extremely
composed, but he also seemed taller, somehow, less stooped, physically
stronger. Solid. When I had last seen him, he could have been made of paper,
and you would have feared that he would crumple if touched by the slightest
breeze. Today, however, he looked able to withstand a hurricane. I had imagined
that the difficult years he had faced had been slowly but constantly sapping
away his strength, and that this grave loss would finally suck the last
reserves of strength from his soul. But I was wrong. Instead, it seemed that,
like Samson in the temple of the Philistines, all his strength had suddenly
come flooding back. Part of me fears that, just like Samson, this last deluge
of strength was coming not long in advance of his own demise, but I have
resolved not to think of that. Instead, when I think of that day, I shall think
only of Walter, and I shall pray that God grants me even a tenth of the
strength I saw in him at that moment.
The coffin was
wheeled past us to the back of the hearse, where the men clustered around,
preparing to lift the coffin. As we walked behind the procession, I looked at
the two young boys, who both appeared to be younger than ten years old, and
wondered if they, like me, were thinking about the day when they would first
have to help to carry a coffin. I wondered how it must feel to look at your
older relatives and know that one day, you’ll be expected to carry their
bodies. Although a niggling feminist part of my brain objected to the fact that
as a woman, I’ll never have the chance to show this respect to the dead, I
couldn’t figure out whether my primary emotion as I considered this was envy or
relief. I’m still not entirely sure.
As I watched the
coffin changing hands between those doing the first and second lifts, I looked
at the twelve strong men chosen to perform the three lifts, and it occurred to
me that there couldn’t be much weight for them to bear, considering how thin
Nance had been by the end. I remarked this to my mother, and she sadly and
silently nodded her agreement. The funeral procession took up about half of the
road, with the mourners headed by the slow-moving hearse, and so, naturally
enough, traffic had gathered behind us. We weren’t far from the bottom of the
hill, and the point at which the lifts would end and we would proceed by car,
when three cars overtook the procession, speeding past on our right. At the
time no remarks were made, but later on, plenty was said about the drivers’
lack of respect. I recalled how my father would always stop the car and turn
the engine off if a hearse went past. As a child, I hadn’t really understood
this action, and had probably been frustrated by it if I was in a hurry to get
somewhere, but nowadays, I realise how important these traditions are. Simple,
kind and respectful acts by strangers cost nothing and mean a lot. That’s
something we all should try to bear in mind.
When the
procession was finished, we returned to our car, which we had parked at the
side of the road, and began to follow the hearse as it drove towards the
chapel. The funeral was due to begin at 11a.m, and as we drove into the town
square, the clock there began to chime the hour. “Send not to know for whom the
bell tolls,” quoted my father, “It tolls for thee.” There was silence in the
car as I thought about that quote, which seemed to ring through my
consciousness with every toll of the bell. I thought about something my father
had said the night before, returning home late from Nance’s wake: “I tell you,
if more people were like Nance, the world would be a whole lot better”. In that
moment, amidst the silence of a bell ringing in one ear and a John Donne quote
in the other, I felt Nance’s loss more deeply than at any other time, and my
eyes stayed dry, but my soul wept for her.
(To be continued...)
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