Real

     It feels as if none of it is real. The clinking of spoons, the constant buzzing of all the conversations taking place around me, the steam from the coffee machine - none of it is real. This is all something I've made up, I'm living in my imagination, trapped in it. I don't know how I got here, and I don't know how to get out. All of the people around me, the lively debaters, the anti-social pit-patter on keyboarders, the middle-aged bald man having coffee with his wife who keeps pausing to look up from his newspaper to stare at me - they're all figments of my imagination. They're all strangers I have passed in the street and am now unintentionally recreating in this dreamworld café.

     I am dreaming. None of this is real. It makes sense. That is why the lights are too bright and the noise is too loud and my head hurts and the edges of my vision are blurry and it's ALL. TOO. MUCH. As I think this, I stare at the pen between my fingers and the paper beneath my pen, and I wonder whether or not those are real. I wonder about my words. Are they real? I do not know. What does it mean to be real? If I write something and no-one reads it, does that mean it is not real? If I say something and no-one heats it, is my speech any less than real? If I live intensely in my dreams and never wake up...am I real?

     I stop writing. I lift my head. I stare at the three pictures of an Italian villa which adorn the wall behind the bald man's head. Suddenly I realise that I am wrong. The bald man is real. The rude man who did not end his phone conversation to order an Americano is real. The young lovers cuddling in the corner are completely and utterly real. I am the one who isn't.

     I am the impostor. I am the false one. I look back down at my hands and wonder how I have never before noticed their translucent quality. Glowing, pale, shimmering as they let through light. The bald man has changed seats, moved closer. His wife is no longer there. I am not flesh and bone. I am immaterial. The wife returns. My limbs are the consistency of vegetable broth. I scream.

Nance's Funeral, Part 3

     I must confess to having been quite excited about my first Catholic funeral; I’m always interested in seeing things from the perspective of another faith, and that can be a little difficult in Northern Ireland. It had never mattered, Walter and Nance being Catholic, which is of course precisely the way things should be. I do, however, remember one amusing occasion when we were still living next door: a friend from school had left me home late at night, but I had forgotten my house key and couldn’t get into the house as my parents were both sound asleep, so I went to Walter and Nance’s house to ask if they had a key, and my friend, Molly, came with me. It was rugby season, and Ireland were playing England in the Six Nations – I remember this because when I introduced Molly to Walter, he asked if her father followed the rugby, and when she answered affirmatively, said “But I suppose he supports England, does he?” I don’t think she quite realised he assumed this because he knew she was a Protestant, or maybe she did; at any rate, she immediately responded with outrage to such a suggestion, loudly declaring that no, of course not, Ireland all the way! I was proud of her, and pleased with how much this seemed to impress Walter. Otherwise, I barely even remembered that our next-door neighbours adhered to a different version of Christianity, and it never made any difference at all to our relationship with them.

     

     The funeral wasn’t my first Catholic service, so I knew the drill; keep quiet when you don’t know the responses, remain seated when they kneel, and don’t partake of the Eucharist. I think Nance had grown up Protestant, or at least, she had Protestant family, so there were enough Protestants there to stop us from feeling conspicuous. I also found that, being part of an Anglican Church while away at university in England, I knew some of the responses, although I wasn’t quite sure whether or not say them. I decided that I may as well, as I was still worshipping the same God, even if I was in a different building. My parents and I all joined in when it came to the Lord’s Prayer, although there was an amusing moment at the end when everyone else stopped after “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” and a lot of the Protestants continued “For Thine-‘’ before realising that everyone else had stopped. Father and I both did it, then looked at each other and smiled.

     

     When the service had finished, we left the chapel and proceeded to the grave, which was only a few feet away from the chapel. I looked at the gravediggers, their old working clothes providing a stark contrast to the crisp, formal dress of the undertakers, and tried to decide which job was less unpleasant. It struck me that they’re two careers which you never tend to think of until you need them. I then remembered a joke Father had once told me about a man who was asked by his vicar if he’d take on the job of gravedigger at the church. He replied that he would do it, but only if the vicar could guarantee a minimum of three funerals per week. I don’t remember laughing aloud at that one.

     

     The mourners all gathered in a sort of semi-circle stretching away from the grave, beginning with Walter and Nance, who were standing right by the graveside. I was quite far away, with several rows of people behind me, and they talked throughout the entirety of the short burial. They were barely even whispering, discussing how such-and-such was related to their brother’s sister-in-law’s aunt’s cousin who was related to Nance, and that was why they were at the funeral. It made my blood boil to hear this nonsense being poured out in gallons behind me, preventing me from hearing what the priest was saying, and I was very close to turning round and telling them to have some respect and be quiet. The only thing that stopped me was the thought that it would probably just result in them complaining about the rudeness of the younger generation. It made me furious to think that these same people were condemning the drivers of the cars who had earlier driven past the coffin, and that they were completely oblivious to their own hypocrisy. I was relieved when the burial was over and I no longer had to struggle to keep my temper.

     We proceeded into the hall for tea, sandwiches and cake, of which I ate what could probably be considered an inappropriate amount. I didn’t much care for the conversation, which was exactly the same as every time I’m around old neighbours or friends of my parents and grandparents; “Oh, you’re so tall and lovely-looking”, “You’re at Cambridge? Wow, you must be very intelligent”, “Russia? Aren’t you scared to go there?” et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. During my second cup of tea, I looked over at the table where the family members were seated. A lady was bending down to hug Marjorie, who seemed to be crying into her shoulder. I thought back to the last time I had visited Walter and Nance. Marjorie was there, and despite being rather frail, and missing quite a few front teeth, it felt as if she were the one taking care of the other two, holding them together. It was Marjorie who had seemed strongest back then, calmly telling us of all the medical treatments the other two were going through, and seeing us to the back door when we left. Now, she seemed drained, exhausted, frailer than before, whilst Walter, sitting down the table from her, continued to look strong and solid, even joking with us as we said goodbye.

        Exiting the hall, leaving the funeral behind us, felt like a significant point. Not the end of the story, because Walter and Marjorie were both still alive, but the end of a verse, a full stop at the end of a line in the middle of a poem. And as with a caesura in a poem, we couldn’t stop here for too long. A moment, yes, to pause and to reflect, to write a detailed description of the day’s events, but then we must move forward, we must keep reading. We must attempt to rediscover the rhythm of our lives, the rhythm which has been disrupted by death, which is daily disrupted and so easily lost in the midst of all our triumphs and tribulations. The rhythm which we may never find. The rhythm which may not really exist. But the rhythm for which we must keep searching, because belief in this rhythm can give our lives meaning. And, let me tell you, we all need to feel that our lives have meaning. 

Nance's Funeral, Part 2

     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...)

Nance's Funeral, Part 1

     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...)

Remember me? Probably not...

Dear World ('World' being the two or three people I'll manage to blackmail into reading this), 

I'M BACK. 

I have decided that just under a year was an acceptable length of time to wait between blog posts in order to build up the suspense, and now you shall be rewarded for your patience. Having received high praise for my first two blog posts, such as 

"I didn't understand it, but I did read it" (R. Hawkins, 2015), 

I thought it would be a shame to leave my adoring public waiting for much longer. 

On a serious note, I didn't keep the blog going last year because I had too much work and got very stressed about work. Or at least, those were the excuses I made to myself and to anyone who asked. The truth is, I think it was a lot more to do with laziness and some bad character traits of mine. I have a terrible habit of burying my head in the sand and not doing things until the very last minute. But this time round, I'm determined to make a go of it and not do such a shoddy job. Even if nobody ever reads this, I'm determined to keep it going, for my own sake if for nobody else. I want to prove to myself that I can manage it. 

Thanks for reading this excuse for a blog post. I hope to have something more interesting up soon! 

Lots of bloggy love, 
Chloe. 

Pandora's Box: The Kingsmill Massacre

     Thirty-nine years ago this week, Northern Ireland witnessed one of the deadliest and most saddening atrocities in the difficult period of our history known as the Troubles. The Kingsmill Massacre took place on the evening of 5th January 1976, when the I.R.A. stopped eleven Protestant workmen travelling home from work in a minibus, lined them up beside the vehicle, and shot dead ten of them, the eleventh surviving despite having been shot eighteen times. It was later stated that the attack was carried out in retaliation for the killing of six Catholics by Loyalist paramilitaries the previous night. 

     In choosing to write on this topic, I want to avoid, as far as is possible, making any sort of political statement. Northern Ireland as a nation has not yet been able to find a way of talking about our difficult past which is acceptable to everyone, and this issue is at the centre of an ongoing and heated debate within N.I. politics. There are those who believe that we should simply forget, that we should release from our memories the terrible events of our history. I do not have the answers to the question, and equally, I do not in any way wish to drag up the hurt and tensions surrounding the memory of the massacre. There is, however, one element of this event from which I believe we can all learn, a story which touched me deeply the first time I heard it told, several years ago, as I was listening to the radio over breakfast. 

     It is the story of the twelfth workman, Richard Hughes, the only Catholic to still be travelling home on the minibus when it was stopped by the I.R.A. When first stopped, the workmen all assumed it to be a Loyalist attack, an attempt to find and execute any Catholics. When the armed men demanded that any Catholics identify themselves, they therefore attempted to protect Hughes by preventing him from identifying himself as such. Hughes in turn, when told by a masked gunman to run, hurried to the nearest police station to raise the alarm. 

     For me, this is a beautiful story, and the beauty lies with these men - not great thinkers, Nobel Prize winners or world leaders, but ordinary men; men who, simply put, got it right. They understood, as so many on both sides of our country's political and religious divide have failed to understand, that religion and politics can divide us if we let them, but that it's our choice, and we don't have to let them. They understood that the life of every person is of equal value. They understood that whatever our beliefs, we're all human beings, and we all have the ability to make a difference in this world. 

     I find it truly breathtaking that in the midst of such a catastrophe, in the face of such needless violence, the first instinct of these men was to do something so simple, and yet so heroic. To me, their actions shine like stars piercing through the blackest of skies, refusing to be overcome by the despair, darkness and devastation which surround them. It may seem childishly idealistic and overly simple to say this, but because of this story, I have hope. Hope for our country. Hope for mankind. I truly believe that we will be able to work together as a nation to overcome the darkness which has gone before us. I may not know how this can be achieved in real terms, but I believe that the story of the Kingsmill Massacre proves that it can be done. 

     Pandora's Box was opened long ago in N.I., and we have already suffered so many of the terrible monsters which escaped from it. But we must not forget that the box isn't empty yet. There is one last tiny creature inside, yearning to get out. She may seem inadequate, pitiful, useless in the 'real world', but I believe she could in fact be the most powerful tool this nation needs in order to rebuild itself. How to come to terms with the legacy of our past? I don't know. But what I do know is that if we could each look inside ourselves, deep into the Pandora's Box of our own hearts, and find that tiny glimmer of hope - well, wouldn't that be a good place to start?
   

1st January 2015

     I've never understood what there is to celebrate at New Year's, and it's therefore never a time when I feel particularly joyful. Minutes, hours, days, months, years - they're all just numbers, yet another way in which we humans try to impose some sort of logic and meaning on the otherwise random events which occur over the course of our lives. But the truth is, it's meaningless; years are numbers, and nothing more. So many people, at this time of year, say things like "I hope 2015 treats you well" - a nice little pleasantry, perhaps, but that's utter nonsense. It doesn't matter how we measure our lives - no measurement will ever treat us any way at all, because that has to come from us. 
  
     I'm starting to sound a tad too existentialist for my own liking, and probably for that of other people, so apologies for that, and please, consider this: the world could end tomorrow, and we would only have got live one day of this new year. Does that mean that this year was wasted, pointless? Not at all. Just think what we can, and may well have, put into one day, how drastically our lives can change over the course of 24 of those things we call hours. Now, I'm very tired and feeling somewhat melancholy, so this probably makes no sense at all, and I doubt that I'll ever be able to write down what I truly want to communicate. As I sit here, however, there are 364 more days left before the number at the end of 201 changes from a 5 to a 6. Who knows, I might not even get to see all of those days. On the other hand, I might see them 80 times over. Nobody can ever know what lies ahead.

     What I do know, however, is that I'm going to do my best to treat 2015 well. To make sure that every single moment receives the recognition of its value that it deserves. To live, as intensely as anyone who ever lived, and more. But first, I'm going to get a good night's sleep.