Tag Archives: death

Pomegranate

The kids have crowded round in the tall, darkened room. Lame jokes are told, muffled behind plastic masks. I hand out sweets and money.

“Would anyone like some of this? It’s a dragon’s heart!”

I tear open the pomegranate melodramatically, juice spraying, and the garnet-encrusted centre is revealed. A few dare to eat the sweet, seeded drops, discarding bitter yellow substrate. Only later do my children relate that one of the party fled the house in terror.

Finding the deer skull… Walking into the hillside woods, along the forestry track. I’m hungry for solitude and quietness of mind. Breaking off the trail, I descend into the conifers, expecting nothing, just wandering and being with what is.

She’s there on the brown, dead needles, like a pale jewel set on dark velvet. I gently lift her up and carry her home, feeling somehow she’s part of me, some wild and fragile soul spending solitary hours enjoying simplicity among the trees.

Since then, at Samhain, she keeps me company through the festival of the dead, of ancestry, of the endless line of souls we watch as we walk backwards into the future.

Corpse

The light in the chapel enters from each of the hexagon’s sides. Inside, on the plinth, lies Grandfather. Even more so than in life, I’m unsure how to relate to him, and yet I’m here with respectful intent.

I hoist Melissa up in my arms so that she too can see, uncertain how this feels or means for a child, but just going with her young wishes. We stand briefly in silence, inhaling the white scent of lilies and observing his waxen skin. He is lying in state, and that sense of dignity is tangible.

Feeling that the intimacy of this moment exceeds what I earned while he lived, I soon withdraw, and we duck our way back down the yew-overhung path, through deep shadows out onto bright grass punctuated with ornate and humble tombstones. The painted wooden gate creaks on wrought iron hinges as we step through to the road.