components.
I go through the motions of changing gears and avoiding
other cars before realising I’m not heading home, or even to my office, but back to the cemetery where my day suddenly became
interesting. Where there is death there is life — at least at the moment. Police cars are scattered across the landscape but mostly localised by the lake. They are no longer guarding the entrance.
I ignore them and head to the opposite side of the cemetery where the dead are still at peace.
I make the walk through the dark without need of a torch. It’s a walk I could make with my eyes closed. The grass is wet and
soon the bottoms of my pants and shoes are wet.
It’s been two months since I last stood over my daughter’s
grave. After her funeral, I never wanted to come back. Seeing the smooth headstone with the brass plate carved with her name and the dates hurt too much. But it hurt even more staying away. The doctors tell me they don’t think Bridget knows that Emily is dead or even that Emily ever existed. I hope they’re right — though I’m not sure what kind of person that makes me. Emily didn’t have
the good luck to become catatonic but the bad luck to be killed: she had twice as many bones in her body broken as my wife; she hit the pavement just as hard, just as awkwardly, and just like that she was gone. No luck there at all, unless you count bad luck.
The tears don’t come as much these days. The pain is part of
who I am now. Getting rid of it would be like losing a limb.
The flowers in the grave have wilted and died. The coffin
beneath the earth is child sized, and the mere fact there is a market for child-sized coffins in this world proves it’s a fucked up one — and for the briefest moment I think about the condition the coffin is in, whether it’s as dented and damaged as the one pulled out of the ground earlier today, or whether its smallness helped it withstand the weight of the earth above it. Then I wonder if she is even in there.
I don’t bother to tell Emily about my day because she can’t
hear me. Emily is dead, and none of the romanticised ideas I have at Death Haven reach out here.
I walk towards the lake and come to a stop near the police tape. It seems that every year the people who manufacture this stuff have to add another mile to the roll to keep up with the Christchurch crime rate. A good year for them means a bad year for the rest of us. The scene looks like an archaeological dig. There are more cranes and trucks than before. Strings of lights around the edges of me tents are glowing brightly as if a pageant is going on in the middle of it all — except that here the performers are Women and men in different coloured overalls marching back and forth, cataloguing death along with the different types of samples that come with it. There is a mound of dirt from another coffin that has been dug up. I thank God that Emily is buried far away from this scene; and then I curse Him for making me bury her in the first place. Then I think of the irony of that statement since I know there can’t possibly be a God — or, if there is, that He abandoned this city a long time ago.
I’m about to duck under the tape when an officer who wasn’t
here earlier in the day approaches me and tells me I can walk no further.
“I just want to know how things are going,’ I say.
The officer gives me his practised stone-cold glare, and tells me to read tomorrow’s paper. I feel like hitting him.
“Has anybody spoken to the caretaker yet?’
‘Listen, mate, none of this is any of your business.’
“I came to visit my daughter,’ I say, about to play the sympathy card. ‘Her grave is here.’
His eyes narrow, and he looks like he is about to tell me that having a dead daughter doesn’t give me a free invitation to go wherever the hell I please, but slowly he seems to become aware it’s the type of comment I’d make him regret saying.
‘I’m sorry, mate, but you’ve picked a
I go through the motions of changing gears and avoiding
other cars before realising I’m not heading home, or even to my office, but back to the cemetery where my day suddenly became
interesting. Where there is death there is life — at least at the moment. Police cars are scattered across the landscape but mostly localised by the lake. They are no longer guarding the entrance.
I ignore them and head to the opposite side of the cemetery where the dead are still at peace.
I make the walk through the dark without need of a torch. It’s a walk I could make with my eyes closed. The grass is wet and
soon the bottoms of my pants and shoes are wet.
It’s been two months since I last stood over my daughter’s
grave. After her funeral, I never wanted to come back. Seeing the smooth headstone with the brass plate carved with her name and the dates hurt too much. But it hurt even more staying away. The doctors tell me they don’t think Bridget knows that Emily is dead or even that Emily ever existed. I hope they’re right — though I’m not sure what kind of person that makes me. Emily didn’t have
the good luck to become catatonic but the bad luck to be killed: she had twice as many bones in her body broken as my wife; she hit the pavement just as hard, just as awkwardly, and just like that she was gone. No luck there at all, unless you count bad luck.
The tears don’t come as much these days. The pain is part of
who I am now. Getting rid of it would be like losing a limb.
The flowers in the grave have wilted and died. The coffin
beneath the earth is child sized, and the mere fact there is a market for child-sized coffins in this world proves it’s a fucked up one — and for the briefest moment I think about the condition the coffin is in, whether it’s as dented and damaged as the one pulled out of the ground earlier today, or whether its smallness helped it withstand the weight of the earth above it. Then I wonder if she is even in there.
I don’t bother to tell Emily about my day because she can’t
hear me. Emily is dead, and none of the romanticised ideas I have at Death Haven reach out here.
I walk towards the lake and come to a stop near the police tape. It seems that every year the people who manufacture this stuff have to add another mile to the roll to keep up with the Christchurch crime rate. A good year for them means a bad year for the rest of us. The scene looks like an archaeological dig. There are more cranes and trucks than before. Strings of lights around the edges of me tents are glowing brightly as if a pageant is going on in the middle of it all — except that here the performers are Women and men in different coloured overalls marching back and forth, cataloguing death along with the different types of samples that come with it. There is a mound of dirt from another coffin that has been dug up. I thank God that Emily is buried far away from this scene; and then I curse Him for making me bury her in the first place. Then I think of the irony of that statement since I know there can’t possibly be a God — or, if there is, that He abandoned this city a long time ago.
I’m about to duck under the tape when an officer who wasn’t
here earlier in the day approaches me and tells me I can walk no further.
“I just want to know how things are going,’ I say.
The officer gives me his practised stone-cold glare, and tells me to read tomorrow’s paper. I feel like hitting him.
“Has anybody spoken to the caretaker yet?’
‘Listen, mate, none of this is any of your business.’
“I came to visit my daughter,’ I say, about to play the sympathy card. ‘Her grave is here.’
His eyes narrow, and he looks like he is about to tell me that having a dead daughter doesn’t give me a free invitation to go wherever the hell I please, but slowly he seems to become aware it’s the type of comment I’d make him regret saying.
‘I’m sorry, mate, but you’ve picked a
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