funeral rites :: April 30, 2023
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The people at the funeral don’t believe in ghosts, though they nod gently when I tell my story about the dream the night before, how the dead woman had come to sit so sweetly beside me, how she laughed when I told her about the funeral.
“I think she was happy,” I say, and they smile with relief and Christian politeness. A bridge has appeared for them to bring my ghost over.
“Of course! She’s dancing with Jesus!” one woman says excitedly and raises her arms. She jigs her hips a little. She has lost two sons and a husband. Her eyes, when she leans in to say this again, are both kind and a little manic.
The people all look like memories I have forgotten. Faces emerge somberly out of the crowd, claim to be old babysitters or Sunday school teachers or friends of my mother. I am mistaken for my sister several times. Everyone wears the same clothes they wore thirty years before. Everywhere the sound of polyester, the squeak of stiff shoes.
The dead woman liked purple. I appear with her in a slideshow: 12 years old, 14, 18, 45. We wear no makeup, then too much makeup, then we are middle-aged. The slideshow ends; she will always be middle-aged. The preacher tells us we don’t need to be sad, she is happy now. I rub the back of my heel with the toe of my other shoe, wonder if eternal happiness is as exhausting as it sounds. The dead woman liked butterflies. On the screen behind the preacher now there is a purple sky; it fills and unfills with butterflies.
Everyone says it’s a shame we only see each other at funerals and weddings; I think that’s the whole point of having them, but I don’t say this out loud. There are many things I don’t say out loud. I see an old teacher from the church school. He asks about my husband, a man he has met once. He thinks my husband is a pastor. This accidentally makes me laugh. He wants to know then about my husband’s job, his health. He reminisces about the Olive Garden where they were introduced. I am fine, I don’t say. I write. I am finally in university. He has to go, there is a lot to do at funerals, but he tells me to assure my husband that he enjoyed having me in class.
After he leaves, I stand still, waiting to see if I am actually visible. I feel as insubstantial as a ghost, as if you can see through my body to the rows of chairs, the red-flecked carpet. I look around for the dead woman, maybe I can see her now. People circulate. Someone plays softly on a keyboard. I resist remembering this life. I resist the unresisting me that lived before.
In the back room there is a reception. I consider a row of water bottles and a plate of cookies, but I have read my fairy tales: food offered in a transitory space is always a trap. One cookie and I will be haunting the halls of this church forever. I move on to the display of the dead woman’s life. Here are the books she liked as a child, here the photos she had on her wall, here a wooden cat, purple. When I die, what color will I be?
I find my husband just before he takes a cookie and we make our way through the goodbyes and out the door.
“That wasn’t so bad,” he says.
“No,” I say. The sun is shining, and I am suddenly sure of myself once more. I look back at the church, imagine the butterflies escaped from their screen, circling, fluttering over empty chairs, taking refuge in the plastic greenery. I want to run back and open the doors, let them all out. I don’t. There are no butterflies in the sanctuary, just as there are no ghosts. We get in our car and roll through the parking lot. I watch the church recede in the side mirror and catch a flash of purple. The dead woman waves from the steps.
She looks happy.
Hello friends,
How are you? I don’t know how many of you are still out there, but I’m sending a wave from my corner of the world. It’s been several months, but I’m getting used to these new routines of interaction, study, commute, work. For a while, I couldn’t do much but go to school and recover from going to school (my HSP friends, you understand) but these last weeks I’ve found things coming easier. There’s more space for taking care of myself, more space to enjoy, less exhaustion. I’m finding I want to put my experiences into words again, so I’ve come back to this space today to tell you about a personal loss, and the twist to the heart that sometimes comes when we are asked to revisit our old lives. I’m just telling it in my own way – a little slant, a little storybook.
This piece came to me very clearly one morning. Joy Harjo says we all use the second sight – in dreams, in intuitions, in our art.* I’ve been leaning into this idea that I am already in touch with whatever I need to articulate in this world, trusting myself to write words the way they come to me, instead of rounding their edges so they don’t cut, or delineating too clearly their meaning. Mostly when I write, I don’t know the meaning anyway. Words rise like shoots out of the ground of what I’m living, feeling, experiencing, and consuming. It makes me conscious of how I nurture myself, how I fill the time. I want the ground of my being to be rich and complex and full of possibility so the words can grow straight and true. Maybe we feel these things most clearly when death’s skirts have so recently brushed past.
Wherever you are, I hope you are safe and well. I’ve missed our conversations and our sharing. Thanks as always for reading these words here.
peace keep you,
tonia
…
Some of what I’ve been reading, watching, enjoying these days:
Listening to:
*Commonplace podcast, episode 109 with Joy Harjo
Watching:
Reading:
~ Fingersmith // Sarah Waters – a twisty, unpredictable, dark Dickens of a tale.
~A Ghost in the Throat // Doireann Ni Griofa – absolutely gorgeous writing about mothering, poetry, and passion. Unlike anything I’ve read before.
~The Outermost House // Henry Beston – Beston’s account of a year living alone in a house he built on Cape Cod in the 1930’s is beautifully written. I can’t quit thinking about his hours alone there and wishing for my own quiet cabin somewhere.
~Standing in the Forest of Being Alive // Katie Farris - Farris’ battle with early breast cancer told through poetry. Incredibly intimate, funny, and strong.
