Kin

Chapter 2

Sunday 8th November 1992

Mother will be buried here at home. We will have a 'small' intimate gathering. Dad will keep her close even in death. Sweet. She's gone it's done. Where she's buried makes no difference.

I dress appropriately in black, hair slicked back neat and simple. Dad and I have barely spoken, I don't think he knows what to say to me now. It's fine, I wouldn't know what to say back. I spend the day in the sprawling back garden. Surrounded by woodland it offers a welcome privacy from the safe faces. Though uncle Denny sought me out often. Bringing me hot drinks and Tissues should I collapse into floods of tears.

Mother will be buried at twilight, extremely dramatic but I quite like the idea. I'm sure there's some significance to it somewhere. I think I'd like to be buried at twilight, although I don't plan on dying anytime soon. I spend hours watching the shadows stretch and travel across the neat grass. Burnt orange leaves blow sporadically in the brisk November chill and I hear voices begin to congregate in the kitchen behind me. I feel their eyes bore into the back of my head pityingly from the glass doors.

Nobody wants to be the first to intrude on my grieving. But my pain has subsided somewhat, the waves have settled, and I'm successfully anesthetized. Uncle Denny finally breaks the invisible barrier between me and them and others follow. Filling the rows of seats. All seats face a depressing little hole in the ground. I assume its dads doing. I passed him on the stairs this morning, covered in mud and dripping all over the white carpets. Disgusting. unnecessary.

Finally, Dad emerges from our home and stumbles to his seat next to me. Brandy is seeping from his pores the stench is sickly. He is unshaven. Acceptable considering. However, for the first time in my entire life my father is wearing jogging bottoms and a plain white t-shirt. Unacceptable. Appearances are everything in this game and he isn't doing himself any favours. 'If you are perceived as weak, you are'. I heard him telling Benny that once, before he took him to his tailors.

I try to scan the family for their reactions, faces have turned toward him subtly. Nobody wanting to stare, they vary slightly but more pityingly than appalled. I guess they're kinder than I, I pray he stays dignified at least in behaviour if not in appearance.

As the minutes stretch and the make shift service begins there is no music, this is no celebration of life. That's why I wasn't at first aware my mothers' sleek coffin was being carried down the 'aisle' towards us. When the muttering alerted me, I turned to face it and was hit by the most unexpected wave crashing into my gut. Nauseatingly painful, a thin piece of wood separated me from her, that's all just wood. My mother was in a box, her body that is. The empty shell of the woman who brought me into this world. It takes me everything to stay standing. It's not sadness I'm feeling, it's fear, how easy it is to end a life, to just be gone. I break my gaze and turn my face to the trees.

I didn't watch as mother was lowered into her hole. I didn't listen as Uncle Denny or his wife Violet paid what I assume were loving tributes. I did notice that dad couldn't look at the hole either and thankfully he was in no state to deliver a eulogy, he sobbed deep and loud. Instead I watched a magpie swoop repeatedly from a low hanging branch to the ground and back again. I can see a small glint of something shiny, Something the magpie wants enough to risk going down to danger level. Try and try again little magpie. Down he swoops, looking around him. Shifty. He pecks at the shiny little orb until he secures it in his Slick dark, coffin of a beak and lets his wings lift him up. The shiny orb drops again. I almost stand to investigate and offer a hand but remember myself just in time. Little magpie was still trying when I realised our congregation was beginning to raise and re-congregate elsewhere on our property.