Do Not Go Gentle
When you discover that you know more people in a cemetery than out of it, you realize that time has passed. Look, there’s my old French teacher on the left. My mother must be over that rock and to the right.
I walk up the windy road to the funeral I am attending, looking both ways, not to avoid being run over but to see whose mother, cousin, father, brother, I am stepping around. I spot my childhood best friend in the corner and a favourite aunt over near the back.
The names on so many gravestones are familiar; if I didn’t know the exact person, I knew their cousin, brother-in-law, or son.
With age comes gratitude and acceptance, mixed with fear, less loathing, peace, love, and an intense fear of full-length mirrors. Let’s face it, I’m 72. Both Confucius and Leonard Bernstein died at 72. I hope that Bernstein found his tranquil night and that Confucius knew for sure that life is simple even though we make it complicated. But what about death?
My second experience with death was when I was five years old, the first one having occurred when I was two, and I have no memory of it at all. My brother was ten when he passed away from leukemia. I understood very little, only that, in some way, this would protect the rest of the family, kind of like a vaccination. It took me many years to realize that my mother was trying to tell me that the chances were that lightning wouldn’t strike twice; if this horrible thing had happened to our family, (and it had happened before), then the rest of our lives would be lived without tragedy. Sadly, this was not the case.
I watched as he was lowered into the ground and wondered how in the world he would ever be able to breathe in there. I had refused my mother’s offer of a handkerchief many hours before, because why would I cry? So I found myself bawling into my hand until a kind man passed me a tissue. I remember looking at the hems of women’s dresses and at their shoes. I was dressed to kill out of respect, but I didn’t know what I was meant to be respecting, and that skirt was itchy. In the way of all five-year-olds, I remember nothing outside my own experience.
Evidently it was important that I was there; I needed some sense of finality. Or so I was told, but I didn’t figure out why until many years later.
Jewish tradition allows mourners to take part in the burial ceremony, holding a shovel of earth and covering the casket. If done following old laws, the shovel is held backwards to indicate a clear disinclination to bury the individual, and the shovel is placed back in the dirt between people. The idea here is that we will be buried by friends and family, never by strangers.
And so I was pushed forward and guided towards the scoop stuck in a clumpy bunch of dirt. I shook with the feeling that so many people were watching me. Funny how the little girl who liked attention didn’t seem to like it at that moment. Strangely, I have no memory of whether I actually did the job or not. My mind jumped from holding the shovel to being back in the crowd, staring at people’s backs.
I know that my mother was with me yet I have no memory of that. I have no memory of the service that came before the burial, or of the shiva that no doubt came after. I just remember being stuck in a large crowd, not being able to see over their heads and a certainty that I would soon be in a box too.
How do we accept mortality? One wouldn’t think it was an issue as those around us die every day, leaving us all with a tad of schadenfreude.
Since then, I have buried many and had a few scares myself. I almost feel like half of me is already there. That said, with all my aches and pains I am glad I get to hug my grandchildren and see my friends, most of whom have the same anxieties as I do. Getting older isn’t for sissies, but as they say, it beats the alternative.
I continued up the windy path to the spot of the loved one who was being buried this day. I hugged my children as they mourned and although I suppose I had a right to participate in the ceremony of internment, I did not. I was much too scared.
I wonder when that fear passes.
Mark Twain wrote, “I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”
I would be ever so grateful if Mr. Twain would come and have a chat with me to alleviate my fears but I am not going to visit him where he currently resides.
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Thank you for this beautiful piece. You reminded me of my first significant encounter with death, which was when my cousin, who was younger than I was, died of brain cancer. The whole thing was shocking to me as a child as I had never considered that young people could die.
I realize I have reached a nearly similar age….and while aging has its drawbacks, as is noted, it beats the alternative. While I don’t like the concept of burial and am leaning more toward cremation with a ‘scattering’ at a place of my choice I do wonder that it robs others ( if they care) of the remembering that comes with visiting older graveyards. Where do we go when we need to remember?