Grief is a language we don’t speak until we have to, with as many variations as you could imagine.
I had already been grieving for so many years, that I thought I was an expert at it. The grief over my healthy body, gone forever, the grieving for the life that could have been. The grief when my son left for Uni and I felt my last purpose was gone. The grief when my parents got sicker and sicker. The grief when my Dad didn`t recognize me for the first time.
All the unkind firsts.
So when my father died in July 2020, in that strange and horrifying year, I expected to be calm and collected and prepared. But nothing had prepared me for how stressful it would be, how breathtaking and sometimes beautiful my interactions with people would be, how it would crush me and make me laugh and cry and be furious, all at the same time.
The visit to the funeral parlour, where I had to choose an urn and was actually happy to find one that looked vaguely Japanese and not as horrid as the other ones, some of which were adorned with rhinestones, poppies at sunset, that kind of thing (let me tell you, it´s a whole new level of surreal when you get complimented on your choice of urn at your Father`s funeral). The moment I brought them the clothes I wanted him to be cremated in and the woman didn`t know how to tie a kimono, so I had to put it on and show her how. The way she handled my grave gifts with such care: the kimono, the otter t-shirt, the pipe and the tin of tobacco. I felt as I if I was providing safe passage for my own pharaoh in the making.
The woman at the florists whose eyes lit up with delight when I told her I wanted a green wreath and sunflowers and who exclaimed when she saw his photo: ‘I feel that that suits him so well!’
The moment I walked towards the church with my son that morning, the way it smelled of the South of France, of pines and figs and sunshine. How the tenor practicing the songs for him inside the church sounded like an angel. And how everything fell into place, Bach and Mozart and Schubert, Dylan Thomas and Glyn Maxwell, M’s beautiful words, my letting go, his brother`s lovely eulogy including the accordion, the reverend who had listened to me and painted a picture that was more accurate than what I had expected, the lavender and rosemary we threw on the urn, the tree that has now grown with him, the bramble and rosehip hedges surrounding us, the August heat.
I woke up every night at 4.14 am after he died. After the funeral, it stopped. He sent birds to sing me back to sleep, but first he had to wake me up so that I wouldn`t forget him. He should have known that I remember everything he said to me, the good and the bad.
Grief is a language we don’t speak until we have to, with as many variations as you could imagine.
Sure, we know what it means, when someone dies. But do we? Her and I, we knew all of him. The kindness, the curiousity, the sense of humour. We also knew the temper, the harshness, the slamming of doors, the things that should have been left unsaid. People aren`t easy and he wasn´t either. When I was little, he was my hero, but as I grew older and his expectations weighed on me, we fought and fought, silly, pointless, horrible fights. The last few years though, I fought for him with all I had and I hope that somehow he knew that.
I need him to know that I took so many of the words he gave me and turned them into poems. There are traces of him everywhere.
The house welcomed and woke me with birdsong, and on the balcony were the frayed remnants of skeletons – two who were not so lucky last year. I dared not move them.
On our way to the sea, we saw hundreds of cranes flying to the south, seagulls canvassing the fields. I have to relearn all the birds she taught me when I was little, there are only a few now that I can name. Puffins and starlings, house martins, herring gulls, chicken, owls, buzzards. I keep the bottle of ‘Old Spice’ on my shelf, when I open it and close my eyes, I smell decades of memories.
I remember him and who I maybe was to him and who he was to me. I still do.
Listen on Soundcloud: A reading of St. Eisenberg and the Sunshine Bus, for iamb
Annick Yerem was born in Japan to a Scottish mother and a German father. She is a poet and editor in chief of Sidhe Press. She wants nothing more right now than a permanent ceasefire in Palestine.
Birds of Firle is a single edition book by Tanya Shadrick being posted sequentially to 100 collaborators around the world, inviting responses to the idea of Grief and Hope as the things with feathers. Each recipient spends a few days with the book, before returning it with a hand-written letter and other small artefacts.
selkiepress.com 