“Be histrionic as you like at the funeral” -
display of emotion is socially approved there,
1930s crematorium purpose-built
for bourgeois ritual, convenience-grief.
(but not alone at home, in bed at night,
(but not alone at home, in bed at night,
nor in the street, outside the shops,
nor by the river in the dark,
the places where other animals freely howl)
in front of people I know,
parade bleeding heart on a tacky stage set,
give up tears I cannot control
for entertainment
at the end of the pier
pornographically.
My feelings are not fit to be seen;
they'd hang, unseemly entrails,
letting down the mood.
Rather, avoid a messy scene,
embarrassing for everyone,
easier to sublimate with banal chat:
“Have a glass of champagne.
How nice of you to come.”
at the end of the pier
pornographically.
My feelings are not fit to be seen;
they'd hang, unseemly entrails,
letting down the mood.
Rather, avoid a messy scene,
embarrassing for everyone,
easier to sublimate with banal chat:
“Have a glass of champagne.
How nice of you to come.”
Unobserved obsequies suit me best;
for her, there should be a sylvan pagan pyre;
or her body covered in flowers
on a boat rowed to Avalon;
none of these allowed.
For eighteen months I’d been preparing,
knowing she was dying, hiding it from her,
guarding and nursing and lying;
storing sorrow behind a dam,
planning when she was gone
to let waves roll unseen
into a wide ocean,
purified,
not like this,
forced into narrow, twisted channels
of subterraneous shame.
knowing she was dying, hiding it from her,
guarding and nursing and lying;
storing sorrow behind a dam,
planning when she was gone
to let waves roll unseen
into a wide ocean,
purified,
not like this,
forced into narrow, twisted channels
of subterraneous shame.
Who was I kidding
to pull that off today, this present sharing,
blogging, tweeting age?
My private vigil already vexed,
funeral is stageplay to exalt her
in front of her friends;
not to show or speak of feelings
fathomless -
a family tradition in the female line,
pride and shyness
mistaken for imperviousness.
Afterwards, someone tells me I'm arrogant.
After scattering ashes, it's “Move on”,
saddle up love and grief,
wild horses broken in by human fear.
Atavistic mourning,
morbid and avenging
- skeleton statue climbing up the tomb,
blood turned into flowers,
flowers into blood,
drummed heart beats -
feels more true to me
than roses wrapped in plastic,
sterile thanksgiving and goodbye rhyme.
Banning unlikely resurrection promises,
none of the words I’d chosen
for others to say at the funeral,
come near the majesty
of what should be expressed;
words, instantly thrown away,
are funeral flowers, beauty contaminated,
unacceptable to hospital wards.
Funeral is a piece of theatre,
ritual, not transubstantiation.
She knew what was real
and what was not.
Only in music from another age
do I find consolation of harmony;
manmade tones of such solemnity
carry a meaning unspecified and vast;
or a catchy dance tune from her youth,
wistful melody that stays in the head
sobs in time with laughter
of someone who never aged or ceased to dance.
- her smile in old photos
uncovered, of her young and smiling
in
gleeful hope,
the look of hope eviscerating me -.
Funerals, despite their mordant farce,
fulfill their catharctic purpose for some;
others give thanks for a life;
or, spotting colleagues, work the room;
some find a therapeutic module,
borrow the dead person for roleplay
in which a lost child finds an ideal mother
or an unmarried man, a wife.
Someone else steals another guest’s good deed,
to use as an alibi for lingering too long over a drink;
respect for the dead forgotten in an addict’s lies.
Social decorum weighing on funerals
gives malice diplomatic immunity,
and good consciences no rest
from worrying what to say,
how close to step.
White knights, dutiful, guard elderly bereft,
or serve drinks when paid staff fail.
Their discretion is the bravest virtue.
But always there’s a Fairy Carabosse or two:
“It’s your do, darling, you find the wheelchair access”
A man pushing stroke victim
(Speechless, mind in prison we cannot guess)
replies to my confusion at narrow door;
either he wants me to become hysterical
or he’s forgotten this is not a pub crawl.
Later, standing beside the wife who could tell on him, :
solicitously he says: “Phone us if you need help”.
She means it; he speaks cant.
Unobserved obsequies suit me best;
for her, there should be a sylvan pagan pyre;
or her body covered in flowers
on a boat rowed to Avalon;
none of these allowed.
For eighteen months I’d been preparing,
knowing she was dying, hiding it from her,
guarding and nursing and lying;
storing sorrow behind a dam,
planning when she was gone
to let the waves roll unseen
into a wide ocean, purified,
not twisted like this,
into narrow channels,
of subterraneous shame.
My private vigil already vexed,
Funeral is stageplay to exalt her
in front of her friends;
Not to show or speak of feelings
fathomless -
a family tradition in the female line,
pride and shyness
mistaken for imperviousness.
I dared not drop a tear, for one released
would burst the banks and flood us all -
just as well, as there’s a weeper outdoing Hecuba
While my grief is dumb.
Rather, avoid a messy scene,
embarrassing for everyone;
easier to sublimate with banal chat:
“Have a glass of
champagne.
How nice of you to come.”
Friends want to hug; I recoil.
Noli me tangere,
I am made of glass;
a touch will shatter me.
I want to spare them
awkward moment
of not knowing what to say
when nothing can console;
I need space and time;
I disappoint them.
In my defense,
stiff upper lip,
nowadays deformity,
was once good manners.
I do not please everybody.
If people don’t see you cry,
they think you are OK -
or mean and undemocratic.
Too right: my grief is for private viewings only;
I don’t have sex in public, either.
My heart’s too full for me to speak.
Someone said I was arrogant
not to confide in them;
a solecism in compassionate society,
I could not
talk while I drowned,
I could not
tell them “How” -
I cannot pause
to define
while I’m
falling -
barely able to talk,
scrabbling for a rope
at the bottom of a well,
I say what I think they want to hear:
“I’m fine”.
One who could not be possessed before death
is free for all now,
re-interpreted, objectified.
Intellectual property transferred to public domain,
jealously appropriated for self-therapy
out of keeping with her reticence.
“Mine, she was mine” strangers cry
I don’t know the boundaries any more,
I have no rights to ownership.
(When someone not my brother says
“She was like a mother to me”,
I wonder if they’d say to a widow
“He was like a husband to me”)
Their love for you has no room for mercy
for me - but it’s not my death, not my show -
“I’m more upset than you!” -
unhappiness in a verbal competition
(that long ago was waged in millinery:
when my mother had joked
about the sizes of brims and nets
vying for solemnity on the ladies' hats
at my father's funeral
I knew she was not really laughing).
re-interpreted, objectified.
Intellectual property transferred to public domain,
jealously appropriated for self-therapy
out of keeping with her reticence.
“Mine, she was mine” strangers cry
I don’t know the boundaries any more,
I have no rights to ownership.
(When someone not my brother says
“She was like a mother to me”,
I wonder if they’d say to a widow
“He was like a husband to me”)
Their love for you has no room for mercy
for me - but it’s not my death, not my show -
“I’m more upset than you!” -
unhappiness in a verbal competition
(that long ago was waged in millinery:
when my mother had joked
about the sizes of brims and nets
vying for solemnity on the ladies' hats
at my father's funeral
I knew she was not really laughing).
I keep my heart locked up
as she did, not worn on a sleeve.
The costume drama we prefer
is the blood red thread
worn by a French duchess
round her neck,
while she dances
on the eve of the guillotine.
I try to behave like my mother would;
but I do not have her knack
of being sociable and unknowable;
in her, pretending was a grace.
She glamoured while I grimace,
clinging to the fourth wall,
hoping to be edified -
- so proud of my performance, I’m off-guard
when sucker-punch is pulled -
but I do not have her knack
of being sociable and unknowable;
in her, pretending was a grace.
She glamoured while I grimace,
clinging to the fourth wall,
hoping to be edified -
- so proud of my performance, I’m off-guard
when sucker-punch is pulled -
an abandoned child-woman sobs,
“You are so composed”
(my fault for hiding feelings,
blocking tears, a false impression)
“But what I feel is -
she was like my real mother”.
“You are so composed”
(my fault for hiding feelings,
blocking tears, a false impression)
“But what I feel is -
she was like my real mother”.
(I think: this is what I must bear now,
this is my duty:
hear confessionals, console bereaved,
never mind my time and space to mourn.
I think: why must this happen,
now, when I’ve just lost her,
does a stranger stake their claim,
in the darkness that makes foundlings of us all?
Why have you bequeathed these trials
to me and not your love?)
this is my duty:
hear confessionals, console bereaved,
never mind my time and space to mourn.
I think: why must this happen,
now, when I’ve just lost her,
does a stranger stake their claim,
in the darkness that makes foundlings of us all?
Why have you bequeathed these trials
to me and not your love?)
- unexpected test, sending me in flight over the bridge of the river -
I feel that surge again,
the drop into eternity:
turbulence on a ‘plane,
lurching in a lift,
waiting for equilibrium,
before I react,
my suffering and my suffering
with another fight it out.
The battle seems to me unequal;
the vulnerability of the foe
weakens
me.
I loathe and
pity
both of us.
I think the serpent flicking in my gut
was a neurotransmitter coming to the
rescue -
after a pause like a dry on stage,
I start acting
what I think is expected of me,
decide my
feelings
at this moment
do not matter -
even while somewhere inside me
a real I recoils, and sinks again.
Grateful that my body reacts
unilaterally, hypocritical
cover-up of mind,
so, decomposing,
I keep my composure.
(Not so hard:
straighten mouth muscles,
don’t blink.)
“She would have understood,”
I ad-lib,
my hand stroking their hair,
(over the top, maybe - I had no script
for this)
- I wonder if they hate me
as much as I hate them..
If this is
self-control, what part of
me
is self?
I should have said with honesty,
I’m sorry for your loss, it hurts
me,
too,
but the hurt’s too
big for me to utter
and compare.
I lack the humanity that makes others
hug and share.
I suspect they want to obliterate me.
I have no right to grudge them
their repair of injured soul;
they want unconditional love,
absolution,
not in my power to give,
my hand lying on their head.
At least their self-asserting impulse was
genuine,
unlike the self-abnegation
on which I congratulate myself:
roleplaying a martyr,
or gracious hostess,
rising to the occasion,
trying
to do what she’d have liked.
tying to act being her
without her resilience.
A child pleasing her mother,
and the father I never pleased enough,
I pretend to be grown-up,
belied by panic of being misunderstood,
too proud to seek applause, too vain
to bear sacrifice without recognition.
Someone boasts he’s taken a mobile photo
of me with my tongue hanging out.
