At the crematorium.
My son says, why can’t he be buried? Why do we have to burn his body? I will never ever see him again. If we bury him, we can look at him when we want to. He thinks dead bodies are preserved by the earth and we can take them out once in a while to remind ourselves of what they looked like.
My grandmother says before we leave, when they put the body in, say agni swaha, pavan swaha. I think, she said the body.
They lift the rails. The gates open. I don’t say anything but I am shaken by such violent emotion that I can understand how people throw themselves on the pyre. Not to die with the dead, but to pull them out, say, ‘nobody can stand so much heat’. Outside, I watch the smoke from the crematorium chimney. That’s my father rising up in the air.
To my son I explain that the body is like a flower whose loss we don’t mourn. That it is in the nature of bodies to perish. My explanation feels both right and extremely wrong. We have no unfinished business with flowers.
When he is alive we stay silent or uncommunicative; we fight because we believe there will be a tomorrow in which to erase unpleasant memories. Right now, though, he is alive and I am angry and I show it.
Tomorrow comes and in place of the person there’s a legacy of guilt. He knew I didn’t mean it, we say, with the same kind of certainty with which we say, ‘he would have wanted me to go on that holiday’. How conveniently well we know the minds of the dead had they been alive.
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3 comments:
We don't ever realize what a long distance grief will run with us before hand. When a friend loses a parent, I have to hold myself back from saying that you are never going to stop mourning. Because it would be so inappropriate to say that. And I don't know what the other person is meant to make of that. And why I feel the urge to say it. But it's true. My father passed away 9 years ago and he still comes up in my dreams. And still leaves me very sad.
Beautiful post.
Being at the crematorium was the hardest part of the experience for me too. It was as if all our cleverness and emotion and logic were flung violently at this hard rock wall of absoluteness and emptiness.
But I think your son just had his first real education.
banno: well, people did tell me that! a couple of them...and it's easy to believe because like falling inn love, you don't really believe that such strong emotions will come to an end. it's easy to believe that mourning will be forever. it's frightening to think this may actually be true.
km: yes. i'm not sure why i tool my son. he insisted on coming so i took him. the place was full of very drunk crematorium attendants 9and who can blame them) and flies. i had to send the kid away with a friend. turns out he discussed cars on the way back.
now he asks me metaphysical questions every night.
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