Associating (Part 2)

I go back in time, to an evening last December.

I follow my friend S. into a pub. It’s a cold night and I’m happy to step inside. S. is the only friend I have left in the Inner Garden. We don’t see each other very often, but do plan nice things together. Every now and then we go to the theatre; on this particular evening we have just come back from a play called The Farewell Monologues.

The pub is not too crowded, we find a table and two seats in a quiet corner by the window. The play was about dying, about saying goodbye to loved ones and dealing with death. We left the theatre in silence and need some time to take it down and let the memories arise.

When I came to live in the Inner Garden, some 8 years ago, S was pregnant with her first child. S, a beautiful blonde, was a radiant mother-to-be, and anxiously awaited the birth of her first child with her husband. Their daughter N. was born on a sunny day that first summer. In the blink of an eye all initial joy was crushed when N. was diagnosed with a fatal genetic disorder that first day. During the next 6 months, I would regularly meet S. and we would talk for a while about her little girl. S., being a nurse herself, was very open and realistic about the situation. But her face was always tense, her eyes dark and her blonde hair dull. Little N. remained unchanged during the short span of her life: she still had the looks of a new-born baby when she quietly died that next Boxing Day.

That New Year’s Eve little N. was cremated.

Back to that evening and that table in the pub.

The waitress brings us our order, two glasses of wine. It feels only natural that S. and I talk some more about that December, 7 years ago. S. talks, I enjoy listening to her. She is an intelligent woman, open and straight-forward.

‘You know, when N. had just died, I could not let her go. That was the hardest thing I had to do in my life, physically give her up.’

‘The fact that I had known for months this moment would come, did not change a thing. Her death meant I had to let her go and this was totally unacceptable. Everything inside me protested. I could feel and see and rationally know she was dead and gone and getting cold, but she was still my little girl.’

She looks out of the window. It has started to rain.

‘I thought it was completely unfair. I still do, I yelled and screamed at the poor undertaking people: why do I have to let her go? Why is it okay for the whole fucking world to stuff their freezers with huge chunks of meat for Christmas, and why can’t I keep my daughter with me? She was so small and beautiful, she would have fitted our freezer perfectly.’ Her hands show the seize, and I nod. N. indeed seemed very small.

‘It was all so unfair.’

When the waitress brings us more wine, we see it’s now raining  hard. Outside people are hurrying to get indoors. We watch them as they pass our window, and then S. continues.

‘I wasn’t sure what to do: to bury N., or to have her cremated. During the last weeks before her death I would constantly change my mind about it,’ S. says and lets the wine spin around in her glass.

‘First I wanted to have her buried, to have a place to go to, and visit her. But it was such a wet winter, it had rained all through December. And I hated the idea of putting N. in a coffin in the earth, only to have the ground water rise to the point where her small body would be lying in the cold dark water.’

S. takes a big gulp of her wine.

‘So, on the final moment I changed my mind and M. agreed, and so we decided to have her cremated.’ S. places the glass on a beer mat, right on the centre. Her fingers on the stem of the glass turn it around and around.

‘On the day we said goodbye to her, I was so very happy with this decision. Do you remember, Mare? It was raining cats and dogs that morning, just like tonight.’

I nod again, I was there that very sad morning. I remember the rain and all those people with their umbrella’s and the smell of wet coats. The hall in the crematory crowded. I’ll never forget the sight of that tiny coffin, buried under pink flowers.

S. is still spinning the glass around.

‘Otherwise I would’ve been forced to come back the following day. I would’ve dug her up, you know. I swear I would not have left her there in this weather. I would’ve taken my daughter home with me.’

(to be continued)