“Hyde Park Cemetery, main gate: Dec 2014
“The weather is going to come in under the door from time to time, no matter what we do.” – The Pagan Book of Living & Dying
“Hugging is just a way of hiding your face.” – The 12th Doctor
Warnings for: Lots of bloody swearing
The theme tune for today is courtesy the Traveling Wilburys. Were you a Wilburys fan, too? I honestly don’t know.
Truth is, when I held your funeral a few days ago, I realised that I didn’t know much about you at all. Living in different countries for nearly 30 years can do that. So can a rift of nearly 10 years, following one of my class-act, manic long distance phone calls. If words were drops of water, I talked enough in just one short call to fill one of the Great Lakes, at the sort of speed which would break world records for jet skis.
Happy days … so fucking not.
By “held your funeral”, I mean I spent some time alone except for a couple of tea lights, thinking about you, and reading a section of “The Pagan Book of Living & Dying”. You didn’t share my faith, but you were okay with it, which was cool.
You dying, not just dying, but less than a year before I’d hoped to see you again – if you were okay with a visit – is fuckingly, annoyingly, on-a-pogostick with the godform of one’s choice so not cool, as to be stratosphereically so.
HPC: December 2014
Is it all right (1), Wilburys? No it bloody isn’t. Death is not all right. The death of someone I cared about / care about? So not all right. And yep, I am old (ish), and grey(ish). And I’m lucky enough to still have someone to love – several someones, in fact. Who even love me, despite my tendency to bloody cuss for frigging England, St George, & America. Oh and bleeding Yorkshire, too, which is saying something.
War memorial St George, Leeds, 2015
Take a hike, Death. You’re not welcome here: not now, not never. Screw the Circle of Life – especially if it involves songs from “The Lion King” or, gods help me, “Frozen”. At an intellectual level, I appreciate – if don’t entirely believe – the idea of Reincarnation as The Ultimate Recycling Scheme.
I like recycling. But I loved her. And no fucking way was I ready for her to move on.
Shine on, lovie, shine on. Maybe you’re a star. Maybe you’re in the witchy Summerlands. Maybe, gods know, I sure as hell don’t, you’re in Heaven. Maybe there really is such a place. (2)
Meanwhile, I’m still here, swearing my grieving, angry head off.
Snowy bench, HPC.
(1) Screw you, Wilburys: “all right” is spelled “all right”, and not “alright”. I blame those fools The Who.
(2) Which, according to Blackadder, is filled with pot plants.
