The stiff Heart questions--was it He that bore?
And yesterday--or centuries before?
The feet, mechanical, go round
A wooden way
Of ground, or air, or ought,
Regardless grown,
A quartz contentment, like a stone.
This is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived,
As freezing persons recollect the snow--
First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.
-Emily Dickinson
My good friend's father passed away this morning at 4 am. He's been in and out of the hospital for about two years now. During Semana Santa he was feeling well enough to go to mass and even watch some processions (in a wheel chair of course).
Death is always such a shock. Even though this man has been ill for a long time, there's nothing in the world that can prepare anyone for the absence left when someone we love dies.
Angelines and I spent about two hours in the "vela" (wake) this afternoon. The actual funeral will be tomorrow at 11. The family and friends will be with the body in their home until tomorrow when they'll go to the church for mass and then to the cemetery. There are a lot of rites and traditions surrounding death here. We went and gave our sympathies (el pesame) and two kisses to the family and then stood and sat in the doorway while more and more people came to do the same--very solemn, very mechanical.
I was reminded of Dickinson's poem. It gets to the very marrow of the surrealism that reigns when you find yourself going through the motions after a great loss--the cold, wooden, stone-like feeling that comes over us; the formal, ceremonious rituals of burial. Somehow we keep moving, keep breathing... And finally there's a moment of letting go.
Hugs from Spain
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