My grandparents' gravestone was returned to their grave this week, after having my nan's name and dates engraved on it. After a comment from my mum, I realised that I have visited the graveyard maybe four times since my grandad died 11 years ago, one of those being my nan's funeral. Maybe I should feel bad about this, but I really don't. Here's why.
Graveyards are horrible. Why would you choose to remember a person by going to a place of death, going to a place where the only memories attached are of a person's funeral and subsequent unhappy visits? Would you visit the room in the funeral director's where you went to view the body? No. Would you visit the hospital room in which they died? No. Would you go and sit in the undertaker's private ambulance or hearse? No. Those places hold difficult memories, and as everyone who's ever been to a burial knows, so do cemeteries.
Who wants to be assailed by memories of sitting in a black car in black clothes, pinned in either side by crying people, fresh from a funeral and ripe for a burial? Memories of a coffin being lowered into the ground, lining up to look at beautiful flowers that offer no comfort, the drive back with the expectation of a family event with a missing member. Not, I, readers, not I.
When I went to see my nan's body, I realised that she wasn't there. There was a body that looked like it could have been hers, a face that looked like an artists' impression, and this woman was definitely wearing my nan's clothes and carrying her handbag. But it wasn't my nan. Nan was long gone, somewhere with my grandad, not sitting in a body which had caused her pain. So what of the grave in which her body now sits? A nice monument to the pair of them, but not much more. They're not there. They're in their kids, grandkids, great grandkids. Every story told by my nan's brothers about her is a memory, a monument. Every time a cousin tells me something I didn't know about my grandad, it's worth more than fifty marble stones to me.
My house is filled with memories of my grandparents, from my kingfisher shot glasses and Cherished Teddies to the photo of my grandad on my mantlepiece and the bread I occasionally bake, they're remembered every day here. I have no need to visit a cold cemetery to cry at a stone and make myself feel worse; I quipped earlier that to feel close to my grandparents I either go to the pub or clothes shopping. But it might be a song I play, a candle I light, a glass I raise. They're all far more likened to my grandparents, and the memories I have of them, than standing in the cold looking at some dates in a field.
No comments:
Post a Comment