She starts shaking her head in distress. ‘Don’t do that, dear boy. There was nothing you could have done to stop it. God knows, you tried. It was simply her time.’
‘She was too young to die.’
‘About four months after Viv passed, I dreamed of her. In my dream she was eleven or twelve years old, before she started dyeing her hair in all those atrocious colors. She was running in a field and she was laughing. Her mouth was stained with the juice of berries. She ran up to me and said, “Look what I found, Mum.” And then I woke up and I cried for hours.’
She pulls a handkerchief that she has tucked into her bra out from the neckline of her blouse and wipes her eyes.
‘But as the weeks and months went by, I took comfort from that dream. I think she wanted me to know she wasn’t blue and lying in a satin-lined box as she was in my waking hours. She wasn’t still. She wasn’t dead. She was alive. Somewhere in another dimension that I can’t access, she still exists. She has never appeared again in my dreams, but she doesn’t need to. I understood what she was saying to me.’
‘She’s never come to me,’ I say.
‘Perhaps you are only allowed to go to the people you can no longer damage,’ she says softly.
‘I found someone,’ I blurt out suddenly, but even as the words exit my mouth I want to un-utter them. I am shocked at myself. What madness possessed me to tell Viv’s grieving mother that?
She swallows hard. ‘I’m so glad,’ she croaks.
Angry with myself, I apologize. ‘I’m so sorry. That was unforgivably insensitive of me. I don’t know what came over me.’
She shakes her head and, reaching out a work-worn hand, grips my knee. ‘No, I’m glad for you. You’re a good man. You deserve to be happy.’
I cover her hand with mine.
‘You know that song by Pitball?’ she asks.
I smile slightly. ‘Pitbull?’
‘Yes, yes, the man with the bald head.’
‘You listen to Pitbull?’ I ask, surprised.
‘My granddaughter does.’
‘Marko has a daughter now?’
‘He has three children. Two boys and a girl. They’re my life. Anyway, Pitbull sings a song called “Give Me Everything Tonight”. He says, “What I promise tonight, I cannot promise tomorrow.” That’s truly life. You might not get tomorrow. So whatever you want to do, go do it tonight.’
And from her flow precious memories. If not for the intervention of the cruel hand of fate, she would have been my mother-in-law. I squeeze her hand and feel a great love for this kind and generous woman. We are connected forever by having loved the same person, and by the grief of having lost her.
‘When you remember Vivien, remember that she was always laughing, always wanting to have fun. She wouldn’t want to be the barbed wire wrapped around your heart.’
I nodded. ‘I know.’
I press a thick wad of money into her reluctant hand and kiss her powdered cheek goodbye. She stands at the door and gazes wistfully at me. I walk up to her wooden gate. I even open it. Then something pulls at me. I turn around and walk back to her. She looks at me enquiringly.
‘I want to show you something, but I don’t want to upset you,’ I say.
‘Yes, show me,’ she says immediately.
I take my phone out and scroll to the picture of Ella. I hold the phone out to her. ‘This is Ella, my girlfriend.’
She gazes at the phone for a long time. When she looks up, her eyes are swimming with tears. ‘She’s beautiful, Dom. Will you bring her to dinner one day soon?’
I nod, and it’s impossible for me to talk because I’m so choked up.
‘God knew he shouldn’t have taken her away from you,’ she says, giving me back the phone.
I take the phone from her and walk away, my heart finally free.
Where, O death, is your victory:
where, O death, is your sting?
—1 Corinthians 15: 55
TWENTY-SIX
I turn the car around and drive to the cemetery where Vivien was laid to rest. It’s a sunny day and the cemetery looks pretty with brightly colored petunias bordering it. I park and go up to a rickety iron gate. I’m not sure exactly where her grave is, but I remember my mother once mentioning that hers is a plot in the east end of the cemetery, and that there’s an oak tree nearby.
I take one of the small paths that radiate out to a serpentine perimeter path to lead visitors around the outer graves, some of which are centuries old. It’s hard to imagine that these people walked this earth hundreds of years ago.
They are mostly overgrown, unkempt and crumbling, but one of the ancient, ornate altar tombs catches my attention, and I find myself wandering to it, and reading the worn inscription. Herein lies Arthur Anderson-Black.
Resting in the arms of God forever,
loved forever, missed desperately.
Flying with the angels, your memory
will never die. Our beloved father,
brother and uncle. We will never forget you.
Rest in peace till we meet again.
1830–1875
I think of the mourners who erected the tombstone for him three hundred years ago. Their remains have joined his under the clay soil. But did they meet again? I’ve never walked around a cemetery on my own before, and it is an oddly surreal experience. Walking among the dead makes you appreciate the impermanence of life and the permanence of death like nothing else can. All these people once lived and walked and talked and did their thing as if they would live forever. This house is mine, this land is mine, and now they are all just gone forever.
The saddest headstones are the ones erected by grieving parents. They are the most poignant. A simple epitaph on a new grave touched me deeply.
Beneath this simple stone
that marks her resting place
our precious darling sleeps
alone in the Lord’s long embrace.
May 2001–December 2001
As I stroll along the path I remember what my mother once told me. When the fruit is ripe and ready, it will leave the branch easily. I was the branch that Vivien was torn away from. I wasn’t ready. She still had too much to live for. Without realizing it I have fallen into a kind of melancholy, contemplative mood, and it is a shock to see a hilarious marble tombstone.
Is This Headstone Tax Deductible?
It makes me smile. I take my phone out and take a photo for Ella. The tax inspector in her will appreciate it.
The curved outer path meets an axial pathway that takes me to a central chapel, and a small custodian’s lodge that was designed to be used for burial services. The path meanders, and I pass a newly dug grave awaiting its occupant.
I walk over to the manicured grass and spot the oak tree in the distance. I begin to walk toward it. I no longer look at the gravestones on either side of me. As if I’m guided by an invisible hand, I move forward with sure steps until I’m standing in front of Vivien’s grave. My breath escapes in a long sigh. Ah, Vivien. Her grave is a custom memorial in polished black granite with a carved weeping angel holding a rose. The setting sun makes the stone glow red.
Vivien Jessica Finch
Goodnight, dear heart,
goodnight, goodnight
Oct, 10, 1987–Jul, 24, 2004
I kneel down and touch the smooth stone. How she would have hated this place. This peace. This quiet. This impenetrable air of mourning and stillness. The impulsive, impetuous Vivien with roses in her hair, the one who could never sit still for a moment is not here. I laugh. The sound is loud and strange among the silent tombstones. It disturbs the peace. Perhaps no one has laughed here in centuries.