A Peek Inside.

Sometimes, when you intend to write something, you just can't seem to get the ink on the paper, or the fingers to the keyboard. Even as you fight, staring at a blank page, you just can't seem to get started. The first line always seems to run down a path which doesn't fit the rest of what you're writing - and the secret, of course, is to start somehow. Even if it means writing at first about your inability to write. Then things start to flow, the words develop a rhythm, and the keyboard begins to give the sounds of some sort of progress.

Here I am.

There's so much to write about, and it's so complicated that it just meanders out of the fingers... but if that is the way it will come out, then it will just have to come out that way.

Since my father's death on August 2nd, there have been all sorts of things happening. The family on both sides - my father's side and my mother's - have come in and propped up a soul slightly off kilter. Friends - real friends - came out and put their shoulders next to mine to keep me going in the right direction.

Over the last 2 weeks, I've recalled my youngest cousin rocking back and forth in a Nursing home after the loss of his father, simply saying, "It hurts. It hurts. It hurts."

Yes, yes it does. No amount of foresight and planning can prepare one for that hurt. It's a primal pain, and while I view it as a selfish pain the pain itself cannot be denied. It exists.

The easy parts were viewing my father's body, and dressing his unwieldy and cold shell in his suit, tieing his tie... these were easy things. Lighting the pyre was easy, going through his things for the most part has been easy. These were things that could be done, that had to be done, that were done - not mechanically, but with a lot of mental and emotional preparation in advance. But no matter what you do, you run across artefacts as simple as a towel, or an eight-track cassette, or even just sitting in the gallery of the old house on an evening. You catch yourself in a memory, and then you come back to reality and wonder why your face is wet.

'Did it rain? Is there a leak in the roof?' And then you realize that it's the tear ducts, and that the only rationalization you can come up with is that something flew into your eye while you were in your thousand-yard stare.

Day Zero

An email is actually one of the best ways to find out about a death, I've found. First, you're already sitting down. Next, there's no stuttering and uncomfortable silences on the phone. Lastly, your brain can read it as many times as it needs to, allowing quick action after a brief period of denial. I found a few yells helped too, not the sensible wordy yells, but the guttural 'Argh!' that slides out on such occasions to transfix even the person screaming. You can actually go into shock hearing yourself if you've never heard yourself scream before. If you have heard yourself scream before, it sort of validates the whole thing and makes it real.

Hop a plane. Get there. Plan. Planning at this point is crucial, not because it's effective to plan but because it keeps your mind from wandering a bit too far when dealing with customs agents who may believe that you are acting a bit too strangely. Strange activity in airports can complicate matters with rubber gloves. Don't do it.

Day One

The first day, you are stuck in the mechanics of getting a piece of paper to prove that the person who formerly harboured a pulse did, indeed, lose that pulse - that the electrical signals in the body are gone, grounded, and that they're not going to regain that pulse. It's really an insane process here in Trinidad and Tobago, and while the funeral homes will take care of these things if you want them to (for a price), in the end the 'surviving' relatives have to sign a form stating that verily, the person is dead - making it real to a system which has problems dealing with the living, anyway. If you want it done fast, do it yourself. Doing it well is completely out of the question. It's all Boolean. Nobody grades the death certificate. Either you have it or you don't.

You sit next to crying children and parents of the children, while sombre people arrive to register deaths and get the death certificate that is much easier to wave at people than a corpse. It's the last chance for the government to dehumanize a person, one last indignity in a game of statistics that we are forced to play in systems designed for the convenience of the people who created the system instead of the people it should be servicing. The people there make the best of it, but it's systems like this which show just how much people are really thought of within systems. You can muddle through this if you have a good wingman, as I did, but it's still atrocious, especially if you sit around and look at how things could be as I often do.

Then, you have to get permission to cremate - since, of course, the body cannot be exhumed for any reason. And so, you run to the Police Headquarters and hope to catch a Superintendent who will sign off on allowing you to dispose of someone's mortal shell that is on a cold steel table, below another person, neatly stored as it came to the freezer. Suddenly, the first day is over and you realize that you need a Wake as you just turn in the paperwork to the funeral home and set the time for the cremation the next day.

A Wake! How can you not have a Wake! All the trendy corpses have Wakes, and seeing as my father had left a trendy corpse behind, we needed a Wake. So you rent chairs, you buy basic things like coffee and tea, soft drinks, a deck of cards, and so on. And if you realize that you're going to be stuck at the Wake, and you remember what sucked about other Wakes, you decide you'll put a twist on things and put out palatable things - like Meunster Cheese, Swiss Cheese, Mozzarella instead of plain old cheese. Pepper Jack and Mild Cheddar are held in reserve. Fortunately, the Wake gets people there who you really do need around. Friends, Uncles, Aunts, and long lost relatives that don't even show up for festivities. Friends show up.

People talk about the person who isn't there for a while, as usual, but it's more focused. They leave. You clean up.

Day Three: Funeral

The next day you get the cremation started, which involves getting the body ready. A Hindu ceremony is usually longer than most, but since the Pundit - Pundit Vishnu - was late, as he was with my Uncle Amar, he didn't get as much time to pontificate. Instead, he chose excuses toward the end which is a variant from the last time, where my Uncle's body was thawing while he was an hour and a half late. Perhaps these were coincidences, but one thing is certain: I will not allow that man to do funeral rites for anyone else that I know, unless he submits his excuses for being late in triplicate 30 days in advance such that I can decide whether or not I will excuse him.

The time while he was late - about 40 minutes - was spent talking to people, welcoming them, and even consoling people who were just getting the shock - seeing the body for the first time. People crawl out of the woodwork, some you haven't seen for 20 years.

You get to the cremation site, dealing with the idiots on the road and staying calm. You get there, you do the five stops for the elements as part of the Hindu ceremony, walk around the pyre 5 times, and you light it with all the different woods and ghee, and the camphor, and all the things that keep the body from smelling horribly during the cremation (a very practical part). People talk to you, and you really don't want to talk too much - you want to watch the fire. But then you don't want to watch the fire, so you start talking back. And before you know it, everyone's gone - you're there - and you watch the funeral attendants stir the fire a bit. You leave around 4 p.m., and continue getting phone calls with condolences.

People are upset that you didn't tell them, and so on. You explain that you didn't have a chance to dial the entire phone book, and that while they are very important and were most esteemed by the dead person (?!), that practicalities exist and that they are simply collateral damage.

Either they deal with that or not. You haven't seen them unless they needed things anyway. What did they need this time? Will I see them again? These are the things that would validate them, but are in question.

Day Four

You awake early - perhaps you slept somewhere else, seeking a comfort you couldn't find on the planet but still trying - and you collect the ashes from the pyre. This is a long task, since a lot of wood is actually used and it's hard to see where the body's ashes end and the wood's ashes begin. So you scoop up some, from the side where the head was, and you put some in an urn to follow whatever wishes for scattering that the deceased may have had (and Pop had made it clear to me on that) - and you throw the rest out to the sea nearby, unceremoniously. I recommend a light shovel, since this is a repetive task and the ashes themselves are light.

If the wood wasn't laid out right, you may find bones. Perhaps a lumbar vertebrae. Perhaps some parts of the ribs. These are possibilities with an outdoor pyre, subject to nature's winds and rains.

You get home. You shower. You soak. And maybe at some point you have to put both hands against the wall in the shower since it seems to be falling, and maybe your mouth opens and no words come out, but your body surges to keep the wall from falling. Maybe. The bathroom, at least, has some privacy for falling walls and surges of strength to support them. Maybe some soap gets in your eyes too, but that's natural. Maybe you want to stay there all day, but suddenly the wall balances itself again and you can towel off, change and sleep or wander aimlessly in your mind.

A Theory on Wakes and Funerals

People who come to a funeral bring their own versions of how they see that person. You could say that they are reflections of that person.

In a wake, the setting is less formal and here and there you can almost swear that the dead person is actually there. But maybe they aren't. But there's a reflective focus of that person running rampant, and thankfully not eating all the cheese and drinking all the coffee. At the funeral, it's more formal. It's an intense focus of reflections of aspects of the same person. Mind you, the person is dead but the people around them are thinking about and talking about the deceased.

Maybe because of that, you see a familiar person in a familiar chair in a familiar spot out of the corner of your eye now and then. Moving the chair doesn't make you superstitious. Getting worried about it does. Don't be worried.

The Interim during the Hindu Rites

The next few days are decreasingly like that. Dealing with practicalities. Going through belongings. Dealing with overzealous condolences and overzealous wishes when you really just want to be left alone to your thoughts and the unharnessed emotions that can be triggered by things you never though could be. You're cranky. You lose patience. You say the wrong things to the wrong people, and you apologize almost immediately. You think you're driving and that you're in control - and you realize you're on a rollercoaster.

You speak of your father in the present tense sometimes. Maybe, in familiar settings, you think he's around. Your mind plays tricks on you, and if your father is vociferous you know that he's not really there, that it's just that maybe you wish he was there. If he is there, he's not unwelcome as long as he doesn't do what naughty ghosts do in the movies.

The Hindu Rites

The Hindu Rites are, by and far, very intelligent and symbolic, though they vary between subcultures and pundits. The general idea is that you need to assist the spirit to find it's way to a good body. I don't really believe that, but there is some comfort to be drawn from feeling you can have an effect on what is happening. I believe something differently, and the best way I can express it is that your life determines what happens - no amount of goodwill from those who remain on a spinning blue marble will help. But it doesn't hurt to be exposed to what others believe, and it doesn't hurt to do these things. You might even learn more about your own religion.

Segue: For some reason, I have been told that Christian converts from Hinduism don't even want to place flowers with the dead, since they have been told it's a pagan ritual, and they don't want to anger a wrathful God who would not allow flowers from relatives to be placed with the best of wishes from Christian converts. This is obviously silly. If there is a discomfort with dealing with the shell of a person you once knew - leave the funeral. Go home. Watch TV. Pray. But don't stand up there and accuse God of being angry about flowers. It displays an ignorance of the professed religion as well as Hinduism.

Returning To Life

I'm still working on this part. I'm keeping the haircut for a while, since it is remarkably cool and comfortable. But getting back into the grind of things is difficult, especially if you were in 6th gear, and you had to downshift back into 1st gear. You reassess things every day, you realize that you're it and you also realize that nothing has changed, but everything has also changed. The world looks different, it smells different, the food tastes different, and life goes on in it's haphazard way. Good family and friends help you get back into the pinball game of life with a few gentle tilts here and there, and they man the flippers when you're off in your own little world.

Yesterday, my niece told me she had a composition to write for her mother, and I was sitting here at the keyboard staring at a blank page, not knowing where to start. I told her that she had to write about what was important to her, what she thought, how she felt, and all the other things that I just couldn't even start to explain yesterday. If she understood half of what I said and it sank in, then she'll get past the typos that she hand-wrote and the mechanics of writing, and really enjoy writing by enjoying transferring her thoughts to a more permanent medium and appreciating the act of writing about something you feel passionately about.

But in the end, I'm still getting used to the fact that Pop's gone. And that's why I'm waiting a few months to write a better tribute, because... I'm still figuring this out. And I expect I will for at least the next 3 months.