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The cortege crunches the pebbles as the horse pulling the dray plods slowly, in tune with the pervasive mood. Perched atop the weathered dray is a pine casket, straight of edge and plain of colour, un-burnished, solid, simple. Behind the dray, flared out across the corrugations in the rough road-way, walk the bereft, those who remain, those with memories of her, her descendents. They are the keepers of the flame. Their black garments cover the life still within them, protecting the departed from their vivacity, and they from her stolidity. A large black taffeta hat drapes a delicate wall of net between Olive and the reality of the lifeless form of her mother, a reality converted in an indefinable moment to memory. The horse halts beside the darkness in the soil. Block C, Row 1, Plot 78 lies open to the sun and to the rain, ready to receive her.
1 comment:
I've been reading your 'cemetry series' with interest. A few things came to mind.
My Mum said that at the time her father died (mid 1940s) that women didn't attend the funeral ... they stayed at home. Can you imagine that!! Anyway she did attend because her husband was not present to do the job for her. But Nana and Mum's sisters didn't go.
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