Buried at Row 1 Plot 12b
Moving forward in my grief-mess.
The reply email came through from the burial ground. Subject ‘Re: visiting a grave’. They let me know they’re moving to an electronic system but in the meantime they can confirm that he’s:
“buried at plot 12b, row 1.”
I just stared at that little line of truth on my laptop screen. His name and location of rest.
I didn’t go to the funeral. I wasn’t ready. To see his mother. To celebrate his life. To cry in front of other people. That was three years ago that they stood by plot 12b and said goodbye without me.
Tears welled as I sat at a busy coffee shop at Luton airport just staring at the little black letters in the email. There it is, in literal black and white. His body was buried because he’s dead. He has a plot at a burial ground because he’s dead. His name is being typed into an electronic filing system for burial ground plots, because he’s dead.
It’s extremely simple, mundane, almost ordinary. This information in this email. Here you go, he’s buried here. It seems so casual.
This little fact of death becomes typed, filed, known.
I’m going to be near plot 12b in a few months time so I thought about visiting it. I might be ready by then. So I’ll just find out where he is. Put my ducks in a row just in case I’m ready.
Maybe I thought there might be a terrible misunderstanding. They’d email me back to say, ‘oh nobody of that name here sorry, we can’t help you.’ Rationally I knew this wasn’t going to happen. Where else would he be?
I met him in a therapy session recently. He was on a little white and blue hulled boat he used to own with a friend. A boat they named ‘brotherhood’ in another language which has now escaped my memory. Where they’d spend hours drinking beers under the guise of trying to catch something. The boat he launched lobster nets from for his 30th birthday. The now empty boat that outlived his 40th.
I saw him bobbing on the sea just off a beach. He was a younger, brighter version of himself. Smiling and waiting for me to board. Arm outstretched.
Younger, brighter versions of me stood on the pebble beach and told him that I couldn’t come with him. I said he could motor out to sea and go fishing now. For as long as he liked. “You love being on the water…”
*loved?
He seemed disappointed I didn’t want to come with him. His smile dropped as he retracted his arm, but he understood. It is what it is. In the way that you see a ghost in the movies, resigned to their fate. Not quite nonplussed. Not quite content. Simply understanding that this is the way things have to be now. Being dead is irreversible after all. So not much point negotiating.
I watched him motor away and fade into the horizon on a clear day. The versions of me all lay down on the pebbles beneath us, enjoying how the sun baked stones were warming our backs. We weren’t crying. We felt tired.
We’d given something back that wasn’t ours to carry.
Parts of me are still catching up with this fact, that he is dead. I keep repeating the words to myself. In an attempt to get them to sink further in.
I sometimes say it to people. He died. Like they are going to dispute it. Or mirror my internal shock somehow. They just agree with me. They tell me they know. Or say that it’s awful. It’s not what I’m looking for, but I’m not sure what I was hoping they were going to do.
So I’m thinking of going to plot 12b. To see his name printed on a grave marker with my own eyes. To discover something more indisputably real about his death. So that it’s not a concept anymore. So that it’s more solid.
I’ve still booked a refundable car hire. And a refundable Airbnb. I can get the money back in case there has been a mistake. (Which needs to come to light inside the cancellation policy please.)
I’ve blocked some time in my calendar to think about what I want to do at plot 12b. What do I want to take. What do I want to wear. What I should say.
I know grieving doesn’t work this way. An hour time slot to plan the mammoth task of ritualising someone’s death. But I also don’t want to rock up under prepared.
He loved the sunflower fields that surrounded his mum’s house in France. You couldn’t guarantee which years they’d be in bloom. But if you serendipitously timed a trip right, you’d turn the corner towards the house and be met with thousands of yellow fringed saucers beaming back at you.
Sunflowers move with the heat of the sun throughout the day, gradually turning with the arc of the sun’s progress through the sky.
We’d think we’d struck gold on those summers when we could play pétanque surrounded by these radiant sun worshippers. Their unwaveringly positive faces as a backdrop to our holiday photos with the friends and family we shared those blessed weeks with.
Simple weeks spent eating too much cheese, sipping rose and already nostalgic as we reluctantly waved goodbye to the fields of wilting sunflowers.
He loved that house and the memories we made there. He loved the straight forwardness of feeding friends, living in flip flops and passing the time shooting a pellet gun at the road sign just to hear the ding of the metal when you bagged the shot.
I’d like to think he’s found some of this kind of life, in his death. To have finally released all the pain he carried, away from those hot summers.
Death doesn’t give meaning to life. Life does.
I guess that’s what we try to focus on when we stand by a graveside and celebrate the deceased. We find meaning in it all from reminiscing about the rich life that they led.
Maybe I’ll take a sunflower down to plot 12b so I can remember the more easeful days he spent.
Maybe I’ll get to say some things to him I’ve been wanting to share. Maybe I’ll just cry and stare at the ground which houses his spiritless shell.
And I’ll think of him in times when his freckles still shone and his belly laughter still rang. And we all still had hope.
I’m grieving and sharing, and would love to hear from you if this resonates. Sending love to anyone suffering, however big or small.
I am a Somatic Coach and through my writing attempt to capture the human experience, through our minds and bodies. If you’re interested in what Somatic Coaching is or would like to try it, find out more about it here.