The Depositions

by Thomas Lynch

  My mother’s funeral was a sadness and a celebration. We wept and laughed, thanked God and cursed God, and asked God to make good on the promises our mother’s faith laid claim to in her death. It was Halloween the day we buried her—the eve of All Saints, then All Souls, all suffering souls.

  Eddie and I have been looking for acreage. He’s a golfer. I’d rather read and write. He says he’ll be the Club Pro and I can be the Brains Behind the Operation. We’ve worked together for years and years. Our sister Brigid does pre-need and our sister Mary has always done the books—payroll and collections and payables. The women seem to control the money. Revenge they call it for our calling it Lynch & Sons.

  Whenever I have business at Holy Sepulchre, I stop in section twenty-four, where my mother and father are buried. He lived on after her for two more years. After he was buried we all decided on a tall Celtic cross in Barre granite with their instruction to “Love One Another” cut into the circle that connects the crossed beams. My father had seen crosses like this when I took him to Ireland the year after my mother died. He’d said he liked the look of them.

  Stones like these make golf impossible. They stand their ground. It’s hard to play through. Those joggers with their designer dogs on leashes and stereos plugged into their ears are not allowed. A sign by the pond reads “No Fishing/Do Not Feed Ducks.” The only nature trail in Holy Sepulchre is the one that takes you by the nature of our species to die and to remember.

  I miss them so.

  I think it’s my sisters who plant the impatiens every spring at the base of the stone.

  Sometimes I stand among the stones and wonder. Sometimes I laugh, sometimes I weep. Sometimes nothing at all much happens. Life goes on. The dead are everywhere. Eddie says that’s par for the course.

  TRACT

  Share with us—it will be money in your pockets.Go now I think you are ready.

  —William Carlos Williams, “TRACT”

  I’d rather it be February. Not that it will matter much to me. Not that I’m a stickler for details. But since you’re asking—February. The month I first became a father, the month my father died. Yes. Better even than November.

  I want it cold. I want the gray to inhabit the air like wood does trees: as an essence not a coincidence. And the hope for springtime, gardens, romance, dulled to a stump by the winter in Michigan.

  Yes, February. With the cold behind and the cold before you and the darkness stubborn at the edges of the day. And a wind to make the cold more bitter. So that ever after it might be said, “It was a sad old day we did it after all.”

  And a good frosthold on the ground so that, for nights before it is dug, the sexton will have had to go up and put a fire down, under the hood that fits the space, to soften the topsoil for the backhoe’s toothy bucket.

  Wake me. Let those who want to come and look. They have their reasons. You’ll have yours. And if someone says, “Doesn’t he look natural!” take no offense. They’ve got it right. For this was always in my nature. It’s in yours.

  And have the clergy take their part in it. Let them take their best shot. If they’re ever going to make sense to you, now’s the time. They’re looking, same as the rest of us. The questions are more instructive than the answers. Be wary of anyone who knows what to say.

  As for music, suit yourselves. I’ll be out of earshot, stone deaf. A lot can be said for pipers and tinwhistlers. But consider the difference between a funeral with a few tunes and a concert with a corpse down front. Avoid, for your own sakes, anything you’ve heard in the dentist’s office or the roller rink.

  Poems might be said. I’ve had friends who were poets. Mind you, they tend to go on a bit. Especially around horizontal bodies. Sex and death are their principal studies. It is here where the services of an experienced undertaker are most appreciated. Accustomed to being personae non grata, they’ll act the worthy editor and tell the bards when it’s time to put a sock in it.

  On the subject of money: you get what you pay for. Deal with someone whose instincts you trust. If anyone tells you you haven’t spent enough, tell them to go piss up a rope. Tell the same thing to anyone who says you spent too much. Tell them to go piss up a rope. It’s your money. Do what you want with it. But let me make one thing perfectly clear. You know the type who’s always saying “When I’m dead, save your money, spend it on something really useful, do me cheaply”? I’m not one of them. Never was. I’ve always thought that funerals were useful. So do what suits you. It is yours to do. You’re entitled to wholesale on most of it.

  As for guilt—it’s much overrated. Here are the facts in the case at hand: I’ve known the love of the ones who have loved me. And I’ve known that they’ve known that I’ve loved them, too. Everything else, in the end, seems irrelevant. But if guilt is the thing, forgive yourself, forgive me. And if a little upgrade in the pomp and circumstance makes you feel better, consider it money wisely spent. Compared to shrinks and pharmaceuticals, bartenders or homeopaths, geographical or ecclesiastical cures, even the priciest funeral is a bargain.

  I WANT A mess made in the snow so that the earth looks wounded, forced open, an unwilling participant. Forego the tent. Stand openly to the weather. Get the larger equipment out of sight. It’s a distraction. But have the sexton, all dirt and indifference, remain at hand. He and the hearse driver can talk of poker or trade jokes in whispers and straight-face while the clergy tender final commendations. Those who lean on shovels and fill holes, like those who lean on custom and old prayers, are, each of them, experts in the one field.

  And you should see it till the very end. Avoid the temptation of tidy leavetaking in a room, a cemetery chapel, at the foot of the altar. None of that. Don’t dodge it because of the weather. We’ve fished and watched football in worse conditions. It won’t take long. Go to the hole in the ground. Stand over it. Look into it. Wonder. And be cold. But stay until it’s over. Until it is done.

  On the subject of pallbearers—my darling sons, my fierce daughter, my grandsons and granddaughters, if I’ve any. The larger muscles should be involved. The ones we use for the real burdens. If men and their muscles are better at lifting, women and theirs are better at bearing. This is a job for which both may be needed. So work together. It will lighten the load.

  Look to my beloved for the best example. She has a mighty heart, a rich internal life, and powerful medicines.

  After the words are finished, lower it. Leave the ropes. Toss the gray gloves in on top. Push the dirt in and be done. Watch each other’s ankles, stamp your feet in the cold, let your heads sink between your shoulders, keep looking down. That’s where what is happening is happening. And when you’re done, look up and leave. But not until you’re done.

  So, if you opt for burning, stand and watch. If you cannot watch it, perhaps you should reconsider. Stand in earshot of the sizzle and the pop. Try to get a whiff of the goings on. Warm your hands to the fire. This might be a good time for a song. Bury the ashes, cinders, and bones. The bits of the box that did not burn.

  Put them in something.

  Mark the spot.

  Feed the hungry. It’s good form. Feed them well. This business works up an appetite, like going to the seaside, walking the cliff road. After that, be sober.

  THIS IS NONE of my business. I won’t be there. But if you’re asking, here is free advice. You know the part where everybody is always saying that you should have a party now? How the dead guy always insisted he wanted everyone to have a good time and toss a few back and laugh and be happy? I’m not one of them. I think the old teacher is right about this one. There is a time to dance. And it just may be this isn’t one of them. The dead can’t tell the living what to feel.

  They used to have this year of mourning. Folks wore armbands, black clothes, played no music in the house. Black wreathes were hung at the front doors. The damaged were identified. For a full year you were allowed your grief—the dreams and sleeplessness, the sadness, the rage. The weeping and giggling in all the w
rong places. The catch in your breath at the sound of the name. After a year, you would be back to normal. “Time heals” is what was said to explain this. If not, of course, you were pronounced some version of “crazy” and in need of some professional help.

  Whatever’s there to feel, feel it—the riddance, the relief, the fright and freedom, the fear of forgetting, the dull ache of your own mortality. Go home in pairs. Warm to the flesh that warms you still. Get with someone you can trust with tears, with anger, and wonderment and utter silence. Get that part done—the sooner the better. The only way around these things is through them.

  I know I shouldn’t be going on like this.

  I’ve had this problem all my life. Directing funerals.

  It’s yours to do—my funeral—not mine. The death is yours to live with once I’m dead.

  So here is a coupon good for Disregard. And here is another marked My Approval. Ignore, with my blessings, whatever I’ve said beyond Love One Another.

  Live Forever.

  ALL I REALLY wanted was a witness. To say I was. To say, daft as it still sounds, maybe I am.

  To say, if they ask you, it was a sad day after all. It was a cold, gray day.

  February.

  OF COURSE, ANY other month you’re on your own. Have no fear—you’ll know what to do. Go now, I think you are ready.

  from

  BODIES IN MOTION AND AT REST

  On Metaphor and Mortality

  INTRODUCTION

  People sometimes ask me why I write. Because, I tell them, I don’t golf. This gives me two or three days a week—five or six the way my brother was doing it before he had a midlife crisis and took up rollerblades. But a couple of days every week at least, with a few hours in them in which to read or write. It’s all the same thing to me, reading and writing, twins of the one conversation. We’re either speaking or are spoken to. And I don’t drink. I did, of course, and plenty of it, but had to quit for the usual reasons. It got to where I was spilling so much of it. This gave me two or three nights a week—five or six the way I was doing it at the end—with a few hours in them when things weren’t blurry. With some of those hours I would read or write. And I am married to an Italian woman with some French sensibilities and five brothers, so I am home most nights, and when I’m not, I call. I sleep well, rise early, and since I don’t do Tae Bo or day trading, I read or write a few hours each morning. Then I take a walk. Out there on Shank’s mare, I think about what I’m reading or writing, which is one of the things I really like—it’s portable. You don’t need a caddy or a designated driver or a bag full of cameras. All you need’s a little peace and quiet and the words will come to you—your own or the other’s. Your own voice or the voice of God. Perspiration, inspiration. It feels like a gift.

  Years ago I was watching a woman undress. The room was lit only by the light of the moon coming through an easterly window. Everything about this moment was careless and beautiful except for the sound of a sick boy in the next room coughing and croupy, unable to sleep. He had his medicine. The VapoRub and steam were bubbling away. I was drowsing with the sounds and darkening images, half dreaming of Venice, the Lido and the Zattere, the tall windows of a room I stayed in once, awash in moonlight and shadows, longing for the woman I loved madly then. It was that sweet moment between wake and sleep when the dream has only a foot in the door that the day and its duties have left ajar. I wanted always to remember that sweetness, that moment, and knew I could not rise to write the details down—the sick child, the woman’s beauty, the moonlight, the steam bubbling, the balance between the dream and duty, between the romance and the ordinary times—because the slumber was tightening around me. And I was searching for a word, one word that I could keep and remember till the morning; one word only: a key, a password by which I could return to this moment just long enough to make a poem, a purse made of words to keep the treasure of it in. And I was fading quickly, my eyes were closed, my last bit of consciousness was clinging to words then bits of words and finally only bits of noises, the woman beside me, the boy’s labored but even breathing, the bubbling of the vaporizer, which became in my dream the vaporetti idling in the Grand Canal, because it was the key—vaporetti—the password, the outright gift of sound whose bubbling and whose syllables sound near enough the same as the vaporizer in the next room to let me traffic back and forth at will between the bedroom in Michigan and the bedroom in Venice and the moonlight and the beauty and the moment awash in ivory and shimmering images. I slept with the word. I woke with it. I rose and wrote the poem down. The women are gone. The boy is grown. The poem sits on the shelf in a book. I come and go to Venice as I please. The language is alive and well.

  So this is why I write and read. Because I don’t golf, and I don’t drink, and I’m married to an Italian, and every day I sit down to it, there’s the chance that I might get another vaporetti, another gift, another of what Hemingway calls the “one true word” that will make some sense out of what we’re doing here. That part about Hemingway I heard on the radio. Keep your ears tuned. Words are everywhere.

  Today, for example—it is September, the last late summer of the century. Planes have fallen from the sky. Trains are colliding. There’s trouble in the Balkans. Farmers are worried about drought and prices. Earthquakes in Turkey. Hurricanes off the Carolinas. Death tolls are rising. Tax cuts and national debt are in the news. The political soap opera carries on. The day is already full of words. I’m listening.

  What, as St. Paul asked famously, are we to say to these things? What is the one true word today? What is the word that becomes flesh? The gospel? The good word, the good news? The truth, the whole truth? The will of God? What’s a man of my age and my times to make of it all on any given day if he doesn’t golf or drink or gallivant? Is bearing a little witness the best I can do?

  This morning I was reading the letters of Paul. The one to the Romans is about circumcision, about faith and works, about sin and the law. No wonder he seems to go in circles a bit.

  He’s telling the Romans that they don’t have to become Jews to become Christians. The earliest Christians were Jews, of course, including, it is worth repeating, Jesus Himself or himself, depending on your particulars. Guilt and shame are ecumenical and have always worked for observant Christians and observant Jews.

  Specifically, Paul is telling the Romans that they needn’t be circumcised. This is good news on any given day, at least to the men of the congregation. There’s a concept they can get behind. Then, as now, women were given to wonder about the things men worry about. The laws about diet and fashions and the keeping of feasts are easy enough and all in line with the rules of good living. But circumcision is a deal breaker and Paul knows it. So he’s trying to tell them it’s not all that important after all. He’s floating this option of “spiritual circumcision.” It’s a talking point and the numbers look good. Then, too, he doesn’t want to offend the brethren back in the Promised Land, who are, it is well known, his kinsmen and the Chosen People. If he devalues the old deal made between God and Abraham, the Old Testament, that early covenant of blood, he’s going to lose the very ones who have bought into his take on the Nazarene—the part about Him being the Son of God. Try telling some coreligionist who just had his foreskin removed that it really wasn’t necessary and see what happens. This is where the faith and works come in, the part that is so important to Luther fifteen centuries later when the Reformation begins. By deconstructing that section of Genesis where God and Abraham cut their deal, Paul is able to coax both Gentile and Jew in the direction of his version of things. Here is a man who is able to make both those with foreskins and those without feel good about themselves. It’s a bit like watching a game of Twister, but it is a deft little exercise in the use of language.

  Language, some right thinker said, is a dialect with a navy. Much the same can be said for religions—whatever the word is, they need a navy or an army to spread it. Paul is Christianity’s navy. He has some impressive character f
laws—he’s pompous, opinionated, opportunistic, misogynistic, vexed by sexuality in general and, like any true believer, a dangerous man. Before he came to his senses he was slaughtering Christians with enthusiasm. Still, no one can say he’s not willing to travel, to “take it to them” in our latter-day parlance, to walk the walk that goes with the talk. No doubt he’ll remind you of someone you know. Maybe your husband or father or brother-in-law. Today he’d be a radio talk-show host or TV preacher, prime minister or lately retired Speaker of the House. Women would be uniformly offended by and attracted to him, each for reasons unique to themselves, none of which would have to do with circumcision. All the same it should be said that Time, such as we know it, would be nothing without the travels of Paul and his letters. We would not all be hovering over the changing of millennia, fretting about disasters and apocalypse and computer glitches. We would not have divided Time into B.C. and A.D., because whether C(hrist) was D(omine) was pretty much up for grabs until Paul got knocked off his horse and saw the light. But for that today would be just another day in the year of some pagan deity.

  So today neither dialects nor religions need navies or armies or missionaries as much as they need Web sites and wideband space and a lobbyist. Maybe Paul looks a little obsolete, with his horse and epistles and his true belief. And if the business of foreskins isn’t what it once was, still, the deals that are cut between blood and belief, tribe and creed, dialect and sect, color and kind, define every age before Paul and since. Then, as now, the haves and the have-nots are badly divided.