Back to the Earth

The hearse pulls up to the house five minutes ahead of schedule, which marks the first time I’ve ever seen you arrive anywhere on time. 

You spent your early days diligently executing rituals of the Catholic Church without any true devotion, and I suppose these next few days will be in some ways a return to form. Still, I feel a shadow of regret as our fathers carefully take you inside your childhood home where you will lay in repose.

You told me once after listening to one of those podcasts of yours that you would like to be injected with spores when you die, go back to the earth to create fertile soil for whatever comes along next. These were words you loved: soil, earth, growth, so much so that you spent your free time coaxing colorful things up and out of the dirt. It was a great pleasure of mine to watch your skillful hands pluck and wash and chop and serve this thing you nurtured from seed. There’s not many who have that kind of patience, certainly not me. It was a wonder to behold.

But you, of the earth, belonged also to the world. A place full of single use plastic and reply-all emails and unchanging customs, expectations of a small village in Ireland and a mother and father who have lost so much that I couldn’t bare taking this away from them, too. And anyway, we never made such arrangements, being young comes with a certain arrogance about death – we were far too busy being alive.

So I hope you forgive me for it, not injecting you with those spores.

There was a long list of things you were fearful of, and as far as I know your blood inexplicably clotting on its way to your brain wasn’t one of them. I suppose if there were a god, he would expect me to be thankful for this, which is to say thankful you would not have seen it coming. That the dying bit happened quickly, took up so little of what time you had here. If I were inclined to talk to such a god, perhaps I would add this to my list of questions for him. Was that a deal the two of you made, or some sick joke on his part? Sure, your death will be short. But so will your life. It is strange though, the way you left us. I do wish there was someone I could ask. You see I had always thought of your mind as a thing of such brilliance I never stopped to consider it needed the same things all of ours do: the blood, the oxygen, the vessels which carry but cannot stand to burst. I imagine there are infinite ways less painful to consider such a truth.

I’ve been told it is customary is to have at least one person sit with the reposed throughout the night. As your wife, I of course take the first shift. I am pleased to discover that sitting with dead bodies comes quite naturally to me. After all you never know these things until they are tried. In fact, I feel a small sense of solace hiding in here with you. How many times have we tucked ourselves away like this? Our parents, as usual, busy themselves in other rooms, fussing over things like boiling the kettle and answering a phone forever ringing. Funny how I’m still the most comfortable with you, even now. I wonder if this means I could love you more than anything else in the world no matter what state you were in - vampire, zombie, bag of compost - and I reckon I could. 

You make that kind of thing easy, you. 

You are more dressed up than I would have liked, clutching rosary beads. Here, too, I had briefly considered objecting. When I think of you, I think of a collection of t-shirts worn thin and plagued with small stains, little keepsakes from long muddy bike rides and splashes of homemade pasta sauces. I think of whispered conversations under covers, and the way you always dedicated two whole hands to wiping tears off of my face, one to brush them away and the other delicately cupped behind my head. 

When I think of you, I do not think of finely pressed suits or beads used in prayer.

This morning, I cut daises from our garden. You planted them three springs ago and kept them flourishing the whole way through. It was a great gift of yours, the way you know how to care for living things. Now the living things must care for you instead. And so I brought them with me, knowing somehow you may need them. The noise in the kitchen confirms for me that we are still alone, and I pluck one from the bunch – the happiest looking one – and hide it in your hands. You always had a bit of dirt on them anyway, it only seems right.

But I really should have looked more into the spores.

I am sent to bed, exiled to be away from you and alone with my thoughts. I do not think they mean to punish me with their kind suggestions to rest, but as I rise to leave my footsteps squeak on the hardwood floor, and I get a sense of what it must have been to walk the plank, to loom over the inevitable fate of a cold and desperate plunge. One look at the bed tells me it will be a frigid place without you in it next to me, taking more than your fair share of the duvet. I cannot bring myself to get in, to pull the covers to my chin, to lay there with shut eyes and pretend sleep will come. Instead, I sink to the floor, thoughtlessly pull out my phone and begin to research what it would have been like, to inject you with those spores. 

Best I can tell, there’s only one place – three thousand miles from here - that offers the service. You would have been nestled into wood chips, alfalfa, and straw. Over the course of weeks, microorganisms would slowly transform your body into compostable soil. Mycelium seems to be the microorganism primarily involved with the process; in the world of fungi, it is known as the reigning champion of breaking down complex organic matter. I like thinking of you that way: you are complex organic matter, and so am I, and so are we all. We spend our lives strutting around in our complex organic matter body suits, arrogant about our place in the world. In death, microorganisms seamlessly reclaim their space. Nothing complex about it.

I learn that mycelium is deeply rooted, composed of long, sprawling networks. I wonder if this is why you were drawn to the idea of it. It is like you in that way. Your funeral will include three languages, your life was lived bouncing between two continents, never fully settling on one. Though I suppose I’m partly to blame for that, stealing you away to America like I did. You have friends fly in from Tokyo, family from Tehran. The branches of your short life spans oceans and cultures, which themselves were built upon your parent’s branches, which included more oceans, more cultures. If you map out every connection, follow every thread, we all might briefly unite, webbed together like those spores. 

Morning comes despite my fears about today, which is the day of the wake, the next step in your journey back to the earth. Until now I knew about the custom only from movies and books, poetic references and passing comments. No one captured for me the way the house hums in the hours before, floors scrubbed, flowers arranged, sandwiches cut. Nor did they tell me about the revolving door of generous women making themselves busy and useful in the preparations, kind and sympathetic eyes of all colors directed my way. I am not trusted to make the tea, naturally, and am confined mostly to saying thank you again and again to the many hands moving on our behalf, guiding us gently through this unspeakable day.

My role today, the role of the widow, is to stand next to you while the cast of characters from your life comes to say their goodbyes. Your parents stand next to me, and your brother stands next to them. We wear our darkest colors out of respect, even though you were always partial to something brighter. I do not mind though, the darkness is the way the world knows you have gone, and it is the way I feel in the absence of you who I always perceived as the light. We welcome people as they step into the room, shake hands or give hugs, and then, finally, they turn to look at you.

I hear whispered prayers to the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, to Allah, to Mary and the Saints, to the Kami and the Buddhas and despite your disbelief in the lot of them I find myself relieved to know your soul has been tended to in such a way. Surely it is covered by this swath of hallowed words said in hushed tones for you. After the prayers are said, the somber footsteps leave the room and head down the hall, into a room that is a distant echo of soothing sounds. The steady flow of coffee pouring into ceramic mugs, the swish and clacking of spoons mixing in milk, the murmurs of quiet conversation, of friends embracing and then catching up. 

It strikes me now just how much living is involved in honoring the dead. The cake is offered and eaten because the stomach still rumbles. We shift our weight because our feet grow weary, our eyes blur, minds wander. We cannot help ourselves, being so alive. Often it goes unnoticed but here in your presence, it is an infallible truth. Every heartbeat serves as a reminder that you are gone to the earth, and we, we remain in the world.  

An uncountable number of times I am told I’m so sorry, he will be missed, he was so loved, and so are you. A different version of me – the version that had not lost you – may have been foolish enough to dismiss these words as simple platitudes, not enough to capture you, us, our life and our love. But now I understand. This is no right thing to say about death, so these words, the ones everyone says, become sacred. They say them and I receive them and, in this way, we write our line in the ancestral poem of everyone who came before us, everyone who will come after. It’s an honor, to collaborate in such a way alongside the people of your life. The great parade of poets who came to pen a sonnet for you today.

Your people stay late into the night. They drink your favorite whiskey, sing along to old war ballads, eat cookies made by your mother. They tell stories I’d never heard before. I tell some, too, stroking your hair as I do. You were growing out those curls and some small piece of me is thankful that you did not have a chance to cut them back before you died. So many things you’ll never get to do – the haircut, the child rearing, the harvesting of next year’s crops. I suppose that’s something you could make your peace with given the chance, but I can’t begin to understand it. 

Your people stay and they cry in that strange way humans do, where we laugh from the belly first and then it turns into weeping somewhere along the way. They slice lasagna and reheat it in the microwave, again and again, when I get distracted and let it grow cold. Someone says they will propagate your plants before spring. I offer your watch to our friend who is always on time, because I know that he will look at it often, thinking fondly of your tardiness when he does. Bouquets and cards and chocolate pile up on every flat surface, counters covered in well wishes. And suddenly you who never believed in spirits are here with us, and I hear your whispers in every gesture of goodwill bestowed without reserve throughout the evening. 

You are alive among the living because we are together, and when we separate pieces of you will disperse across the world like seeds blown by the wind. Your gentle response to a rigid world, your nurturing spirit, the things you taught us while you could. You are carried along now by those of us who loved you, who always will. And in this way, your network of complex matter does as you wanted. 

We return you back to the earth, where you have become fertile soil in which beautiful things will grow.