After You Died

Senior, 3rd prize

Killian O’Dwyer, CBS, Ennistymon

YOUR funeral was a quiet affair. Few came, fewer cried. I didn’t. I felt nothing for you, I didn’t think I ever would again.
The priest did what priests do at a funeral. He conducted a sombre ceremony, including all the platitudes that are all too clichéd to mean anything to anyone anymore.
“She will be sorely missed by those who loved her,” was a worthless phrase. I was sure nobody could love you of all people.
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” That one had never made any sense to me. You are neither dust nor ash before your death, or before your birth. Your body is just a biological mess of organs and blood vessels that didn’t make a whole lot of sense to most people.
“…Her death was a peaceful passing…” Well, he was right about that. Everyone had known you were dying. I suspected that even you had known in those last few days. I considered telling you on the day that I visited you, you know. But I didn’t. I didn’t because I, unlike you, have some humanity left.
I became aware that the priest’s tired intonations had ceased and a silence had settled. I looked up and saw that the ceremony had drawn to a close; the silence being replaced by the restrained scuffle of people trying to stand up and prepare to leave without drawing much attention to themselves. The men who had kindly volunteered to carry your coffin – it was strange to think of it as your coffin, with your corpse all nicely arranged and ready to decay inside – stood up and lifted you out of the church. I followed, as I was expected to do. I don’t think I looked either sad or happy and I don’t think it mattered. My manner was one of total neutrality. Looking around me, I could see not one face with what I would call ‘genuine’ emotion on it. But then again, I’m inclined to think like that when it’s about you, am I not? After all, you did?
The trip to the graveyard was uneventful, as were the happenings at the grave itself. You were lowered down in your polished box to a depth that was probably six feet, a few measly flowers were thrown down too to wither and rot along with you. The dirt was shovelled back in on top and that was that. To others, the sight of the closed grave would have been a sight of haunting, upsetting finality but to me it felt almost like relief. A woman from the dispersing crowd, clad all in black and with the streak of a single tear down the right side of her face, looked to me standing by the graveside on my own. She was older than me, her hair greying at the roots. She broke away from the rest of the small crowd and walked up to where I was, standing beside the closed grave. I moved neither towards nor away from her, but she came uncomfortably close nonetheless.
“Rose was your mother, wasn’t she? It must be so hard to lose her,” she said with sympathy. The word “mother” sparked in me a flash of anger but I suppressed it in light of the occasion.
“I..was Rose’s daughter, yes. But I didn’t lose my mother this week. I lost my mother a long time ago and I am here only because here is where I am expected to be. I’m supposed to be given time and space to grieve whereas in fact my grieving finished long ago.”
The woman looked quite startled and almost hurt by what I had said but I meant every word. After a moment’s pause, she replied, “Well dear, you’re probably just going through a hard time at the moment. I live in the house next to Rose’s and if there’s ever anything you need…”
I gave her a look that told her in no uncertain terms that I would never need anything from her. She took a step back as if intimidated. “Right, well…ah… sorry for your loss,” she said, before getting out of my company as quickly as she could, while still appearing vaguely respectful.
Later, I went back to your house to clear it out. I had called the real estate agents already, there was no reason not to sell it straight away. Keeping it would be useless sentimentality. After you left me with neither warning nor apology, abandoned me as a child, I had gotten rid of everything to do with you – photographs, your hairbrush, even a tape I knew you’d liked. Everything. It was cleansing in a way, I suppose. Now I would do the same here, get this house out of my life as quickly as you’d gotten out of mine.
Being a naturally organised person, I needed to clean from the top down and that meant starting in the attic. I climbed the old stepladder up to the dark, musty smelling space. I reached with my hand, fumbling for a lightswitch in the cobweb-ridden darkness, but could find none. In my fairly limited field of vision, the only thing I could see was a small old chest or container of some sort. I wasn’t entirely sure what to call it. I lifted it and began to awkwardly step down the stairs with it, surprisingly heavy as it was, but before I got halfway down to ground level, I lost my grip and it fell to the floor, emptying its contents all over.
Envelopes. Nothing but a lot of envelopes. I knelt down and picked up the nearest one to me, only to get a shock. It was addressed to me and in your handwriting. The address was not complete and not recent either.
I put it down. I didn’t understand. Why would you, the conniving wretch who’d walked out on me and my father without as much as a backwards glance, why would you have written a letter to me and then not send it? I looked at the envelope again.
‘Emily Moriarty, 59 Everett Road, Rane-’
There it ended, as if you hadn’t been able to bring yourself to finish it. I put it down and picked up another.
‘Emily Moriarty, 17 Weathermount Heights, Dun-’ A different address. This one was only two years old. Again it was unfinished.
Every single envelope that had been in the chest was addressed to me, each incomplete and unsent. For everywhere I had ever lived, there was at least one letter, often more.
There was just one envelope that your handwriting wasn’t scrawled across, a larger yellow envelope that hadn’t even been sealed. I sat down on the floor and tentatively turned it around in my hand and opened it.
It was full of photographs and negatives. The first I saw was of you holding a baby. It was years ago and I knew without checking that I was the child in your arms. Scribbled on the back was ‘Emily and I, 1981’. The next three were of us both too; you and I back when we had been a family and everything had just been…better. The fifth and final picture in the envelope was a posed picture of you with my father and an eight-year-old me between you. I could remember that photo being taken, just weeks before you left. The three of us looked so happy; we had never been like that since.
I felt my eyes begin to water. I tried to hold back but I knew that there was no point.
So I sat on the floor of your house surrounded by your letters and pictures, thought about you and cried for the first time in years.