The Closing Ceremony

Thursday, 9 October 

To be read listening to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHCQ__AqzHA


I'm saying goodbye to Scott just a day shy  of the three unnaturally long weeks since he died and I wake up to a beautiful sun in an overcast sky, the colours of my anxiety. It's been almost three weeks since my mind hasn't stopped, my heart changing its beat to the ill orchestrated tune of a whole range of emotions from desolation to hopeful joy and back again within a matter of hours, leaving me in a state of expectation, of tension, as the only certainty I have is that it will be a hard day. I'm not sure at this point if there will be any tears and I am a bit worried that there won't. 

I'm lucky, as I find myself in the place I've come to associate with harmony, beauty, meaningful talks and easy laughter, with family and friends, with love and freedom of being and expressing who you are, a place where even the building, or rather, the home has a name - Carrot Cottage. It's right that it has name because it is as full of character, warmth and colour as the people who have found it, looked after it and let it be what it wanted to be. It's not perfect - the shower head keeps falling off at the most inopportune times, the oven door sometimes falls off its hinges, but it sleeps as many or as few people that need it and it never feels crowded or empty, it's colourful, playful, comfortable, a wonderful mismatch that just flows together effortlessly and it's bursting with creativity and individuality. The people who live there are musicians, artists, intellectuals, film makers, they are interesting and interested and have understood that freedom can only thrive on respect, love and communication.  I love them.

I start getting ready and see myself drifting into the ritual that precedes an occasion, considerably longer, more thorough, steady, calculated movements to counteract the impatience inside - I style my hair, put my make up on, consider outfits and then re-consider and in the end I'm pleased with the result. All the time I think Is this appropriate?? Am I not being superficial? But then it dawns on me - I'm HIS girl and I'm about to meet  people that have been part of his life before me, for the first time .. I will make him proud and show myself as he saw me - beautiful and in love. 

I step outside his house, with his family and see the coffin for the first time - this was what I feared most. I had heard it over and over - that's not him in there and I knew it, of course, yet there he was, or rather IT was, in front of me, a few yards and a lifetime away. I never saw him again after he gave me a kiss goodbye that morning, when I barely opened my sleepy eyes and I know it's for the best but my morbid, curious, obstinate mind just wouldn't let me settle. 

I was trying so hard to be dignified, to muffle my cries, to comfort his parents and brother and ended up a shaking mess, gripping his father's hand and latching on to him in desperate need of consolation. I heard everyone speak and felt their pain, most of all his brother's and then, as if in a daze, my name was called and I made my way to the podium, with the determination of a person who has a job to do. I started reading my own words, that I had prepared with tears and anguish just week or so before. They seemed like a memory I had dug up from layers of thought and time. In retrospect, I'm so happy I wrote them then, as they were raw and coarse. I read it to the end, as a cry meant to convince a disbeliever, although no one had questioned anything and now I realise I was actually shouting at whoever rolled the dice and took him away.

I had been saying goodbye to him every morning since it happened and pretty much all throughout the days that were washing over me or running through me thereafter, so there was no attachment to the coffin everyone was turning their last glance towards - I actually resented it..the box containing something so precious, so within reach, yet nothing of what it once was.

I was exhausted at the end of the day and I don't mean to be or sound ungrateful, but I was tired of words of consolation, of assurances that he loved me, of meeting people..so many people. Of course I didn't sleep well that night but the night after, before going to bed, I asked him to come and sleep with me - he did and I slept like a baby, without dreams.  

It's over now and like any milestone, riddled with anticipation, with a false sense of security, with the certainty of community, I was expecting to feel a void once it passed, the feeling of a come down after a powerful high. But the void was there before and still is, not any more or less heavy.