A Pilgrim’s Digression

Before my leave-taking last week, I noticed a flier posted in the elevator lobbies around the library, advertising a retirement party for an “icon” who has worked here forty-six years. At one time, I would have said I can’t imagine working anywhere past retirement age, let alone forty-six years. Thirty years is enough for me, not one day more.

Now, I am not sure retirement sounds so enticing. I can fully understand why someone might continue working past the point that they don’t have to work any longer. There is great relief in work, so long as the work is not too dull. I can find comfort in an inter-office mail envelope and distraction in any number of tasks which, once completed, are forgotten in an hour. Work is good, work is healthy. I returned to work today; I am good, I am healthy.

Upon leaving to return to West Virginia last Saturday morning, I hastily chose some reading for the week. Literally on my way out the door, I picked at random Dombey and Son, a novel that, as it turns out, is much preoccupied by death even for a typical Dickens novel. I’ve read all the well-known Dickens novels, now it is my lot to read the not-so-well known novels. And like all the ones I’ve read before, I think Dombey and Son is likely to be forever associated in my mind with a particular time, place, and event. Oliver Twist I associate with my Junior High School library, where I read large portions of it. David Copperfield I took with me on one of our summer vacations to Canada. Great Expectations I associate with my ninth grade English classroom, where we read portions of it aloud to the accompaniment of humorous commentary from our English teacher, an elderly man crippled by Polio so that he could not stand but sat at his desk throughout the class session. Nicholas Nickleby I read at Christmas, and I particularly remember reading it in front of my grandparent’s fireplace on Christmas Eve. A Tale of Two Cities I read in my college apartment.

Dombey and Son will now mark this time in my life. The young hero’s mother dies early in the first chapter, after giving birth to him, and at the beginning of the third chapter, Dickens pens a memorable paragraph about how quickly we forget the dead.

The funeral of the deceased lady having been performed to the entire satisfaction of the undertaker, as well as of the neighbourhood at large, which is generally disposed to be captious on such a point, and is prone to take offence at any omissions or short-comings in the ceremonies, the various members of Mr. Dombey’s household subsided into their several places in the domestic system. That small world, like the great one out of doors, had the capacity of easily forgetting its dead; and when the cook had said she was a quiet-tempered lady, and the house-keeper had said it was the common lot, and the butler had said who’d have thought it, and the housemaid had said she couldn’t hardly believe it, and the footman had said it seemed exactly like a dream, they had quite worn the subject out, and began to think their mourning was wearing rusty too.

Dickens’s truthfulness in matters of life and death always amazes me, no matter how many of his novels I read. We are disposed to think of nineteenth century writers as being too poetically euphemistic to be truthful. Yet in Dickens we have a writer who knew the right words to puncture our hypocrisy. Funerals are not to remember the dead, but so that we the living may more easily forget.

One could add any number of inanities to Dickens’s catalog of “stupid things people say at a funeral.” I would add the following:

1. “They did a good job on her” ["they" referring to the mortician and the corpse's hairdresser].
2. “She looks just like she’s sleeping.”
3. “Me, I’m going to be cremated.”
4. “God has called her home.”
5. “It just reminds you of what’s important.”
6. “Why aren’t there more flowers? That’s a pitiful display of flowers.”
7. “At least she didn’t suffer much.”
8. “She would love to have seen this.”
9. “She’s with Grandpa now.”
10. “It’s a shame the family only comes together for her funeral.”
11. “The weather’s going to be nice for going to the cemetery.”
12. “She held on until all her children said good-bye.”
13. “She never wore clothes like that in real life.”
14. “Those aren’t all of her rings. Who got her rings?”
15. “Who put that cross in the casket? That’s just tacky.”
16. “I feel like she’s right here with us.”
17. “It doesn’t look like her at all.”

The sad thing about death is that aside from the sudden cessation of one’s being, nothing really changes. People wear the subject out and quickly tire of their mourning, too. The day after the funeral comes as a relief. Time to go back to work, to the essential business of forgetting, of not mentioning.

Note to self: don’t die during the holiday season.

I spent much of last week longing for some quiet time to read my book. I never found it. I read perhaps fifty pages in “Dombey,” just enough to tell me I want very much to finish this book. It’s a good one. Sometimes you just want peace to be alone and read and think.

Note to self: try to die on a Thursday so that the funeral can occur on a weekend. Friday is also acceptable.

The casket containing her corpse was not as heavy as I thought it would be. We carried it about sixty yards down a sloping hillside. I led the way. Two workmen in Carhart bib overalls and blaze orange hunting caps stood beside the open grave. Monday was the first day of deer season in West Virginia. A contraption for lowering the casket into the grave stood above the hole. The backhoe used to dig the grave was parked discreetly on top of the hill beside the small, country church.

A young man and woman, perhaps relatives of the backhoe operator, stood at a distance down the hillside, dressed casually in sweatshirts and jeans. The young woman held a baby, and she and the young man chatted and laughed, ignoring the child the woman jostled on her hip. The two of them were probably not twenty years old, and they paid no attention to what was going on up the hill from where they stood. I felt some resentment at their presence, though I quickly let it go.

We placed the casket on the concrete slab underneath the hoist that would lower the casket into the grave and then lower the concrete slab on top of it. I stood on the edge of the grave and, hand over hand, I pushed the casket onto the slab as the other pallbearers pushed the casket from behind. They pushed so eagerly, I felt as if I were about to topple into the grave myself. Finished, we stood around the grave as the workmen placed straps around the coffin and then lowered it into the hole. Family members pushed close to see.

Brendan stood beside me.

“Is Grandma Hazel in that box?”

“Yes.”

“What is she doing in the box?”

“Only her body is there.”

“In the box?”

“Yes.”

“Is she dead?” [He had asked this several times before.]

“Yes.”

“Her body is in the box.” [A statement this time, no question.]

“Only her body is here. Her…mind went up to Heaven.”

I sound as clumsy and foolish as everyone else

“Are they going to put her body in the ground?”

“Yes. When we die, our bodies go in the ground.” I tap his head with my finger, “But this goes up to Heaven.”

Need to clarify that.

“When we die, our bodies go in the ground, but our mind, the important part, the part that is us, goes upto Heaven.”

No reply. What a stupid git I am. But then, I don’t understand either.

At the end, the casket dropped the remaining inches, clanging loudly against the concrete bottom of the vault. Some of the women jumped and gasped. Then it was done. We turned away and walked back up the hill.

No one stayed to see the slab placed over the vault or the dirt shoveled in. This is how it ends, I think. Yet I can make no sense of these details. None of it makes any sense to me.