C U LT ÚR
December 01 2020
7
SIAMSAÍO CHT
17
CREATIVE CORNER: Brigghter By Fiona Lee I visit my girlfriend’s grave every Tuesday. My mum was understanding and sympathetic at the beginning and a few weeks beyond that, but she started to get upset by me picking all of her lovely garden roses. I lay bunches of daisies now instead. We had only been going out for eight months, but when you’re sixteen that’s the equivalent of eight years, maybe even more given my own attention span. It was going so, so well, much to the jealousy of my friends, much to my delight. I have never been considered terribly cool by my classmates, despite being a whizz on the oboe and being so well ‘connected’ that I could eat my lunch in the teacher’s lounge. When Niamh started to go out with me, it was nothing but a sheer miracle, a new star in the sky, forever a warm summer’s evening. When she stepped out onto the road and got knocked down by a gang of electric scooters, the universe seemed to fall back into place. One typical Tuesday, there was a soft breeze, but it was still quite pleasant in the cemetery. It was slightly less depressing to walk around when the sky was a clear blue and fresh flowers lay on many graves. This was a joyful change to the flowers turning grey and sludgy during the winter months when families came to visit less often. I found myself counting how many ‘Walsh’ gravestones I passed, but this time my eyes caught something more worthy of my attention. It was a shared gravestone, ‘Joseph Whitty 1830 - 1847, Maureen Whitty 1831 - …’. Blank. What? My heels stuck into the gravel and dust scratched my throat as I gaped at the questionable dates. Had my eyes tricked me? Had I walked into a time - warp, or are my mathematical skills failing me yet again? Puzzled, I began to reach for the rational part of my brain. She must have emigrated, or remarried, or been kidnapped! Many explanations could explain away this funny and strange grave, but my curiosity burned at the sight of fresh lilies lying on its soil. I started to linger every Tuesday and would arrive a little bit earlier than usual. After a few weeks of nothing, I began to visit every day, hoping to catch a glimpse of some fresh lilies being laid. Maybe the figure would share a little tale with me, an old love story between two teens who were torn apart by tragedy. It was hard for me to imagine that being true. Maybe it was a prop for a film that was left behind or a prank by some hoodlums skilled in stone - carving. I would have believed that sooner than someone moving on from heartbreak. Niamh would have found my curiosity funny, she would have waited with me and made daisy chains, or drawn a sad comic about it. I lingered and lingered, for a fair few weeks. I learned Hamlet quotes and digestive diagrams with Niamh by my side. One Monday, a rustling hit my ears. I heard gravel stirring, crows’ wings flapping, and then I saw her. She was a short woman, maybe more of a girl. Her dark curls bounced with little sections pinned back, but a few strands of hair tickled her face still. She wore a dusty blue dress with white buttons and lace pleats. Her delicate hands lay the very same lilies, watering them with little tears that managed to slip away. I dropped my highlighters and jogged over, growing timid as
I approached. She looked my age, plump skin and pale. Quite pretty, actually. “Miss? Sorry, hi”, I stammered. She jumped, dried her eyes, lost her footing and stumbled backwards in a frilly heap. “Oh, I’m so sorry! I’m so stupid, I don’t know why I’m bothering you at all!” I helped her up and held her hands until she found her balance. “Are you okay?” She brushed her hair out of her eyes, clearly a bit breathless and looked at me with wide eyes. “Well, I suppose so, yes.” “Are these your grandparents?” She dusted off her skirt and glared at me. “Nope, that’s just me and my boyfriend, Joe”. When I opened my eyes, I found myself lying on the ground and she was tickling my nose with dandelions. My head hurt and my palms had little scratches on them. “Ah, you’re back, do you faint often? That’s a bit worrying”. “Maureen?” I mumbled. “Yeah, Maureen. I probably should lie and I generally do, but I feel a bit funny today and didn’t fancy it. It’s nice to be honest every decade or so.” I introduced myself to prevent her from speaking for a second, to buy some time and work out if I am in fact me, and that this is not my imagination going haywire in a dream, or that I’m not concussed. “Why aren’t you six feet under my feet right now?” I stuttered. “Well that’s a bit of a rude question, would you rather I was buried, dead and rotting underneath you?”. She sat down beside me, started to pick dandelions and sighed. “Well, this is mo chroí, Joe. Back in 1847, we were utterly mad for each other, but typically enough, our parents did not like us being together. A wealth gap was a factor, though the famine did put stress on every family. I wasn’t allowed to see him, not even when he started to get sick. He died and I wasn’t even allowed to say goodbye”. She looked at me and I looked at her, and I think she knew I wanted to listen. “When I heard the news, the pain was unbearable. I couldn’t imagine the rest of my life without him. Literally. My heart became as heavy as stone, my veins dried up and my skin stiffened with shock. My spine splintered and everything became numb. Unfortunately, this was not death. Not really. I have been frozen like this since, frozen as I was when he was still with me, still loved me. I ran away from home and carved my name into this stone, with his name, and I’ve been visiting ever since”. We sat there for a while, twiddling our thumbs and playing with the patch of grass beside us. “That’s a lot of information”, I said. “I’m glad you don’t think I’m crazy”, she said. “I’m worried I am”. I started to visit her every Monday. When it rained we would sit under the thick trees on the hill overlooking the cemetery, and on sunny days we would walk around the grounds. She would tell me how Joe’s messy hair would fall into his eyes, and I’d tell her about Niamh’s missing molar she lost during a hockey match. We would cry, remembering our favourite memories of them, our hardest moments without them, and take turns having particularly bad days.
“Does it ever get better?” she asked. “I’ll let you know”, I answered. It wasn’t always a tragic conversation though. I would tell her about funny moments from school, and she would tell me about her school days; they differed to say the least. She would tease me for saying ‘chimney’ like ‘chimley’, and I’d tease her when she squealed about her shoes getting muddy. We talked about heartbreak, but we talked about our friends too. We talked about our annoying parents and the homely things she missed. She made me laugh, a lot, and I think I made her laugh too. She rarely gave me the satisfaction, but I couldn’t miss that sweet smile. She actually cried with laughter when I fell out of that slippery tree. I thought I would look cool, but it made me happier to see her laugh like that. After a few weeks of chatting and laughing, I began to notice changes. Her curls weren’t as bouncy as before, and her roots had faded to white. Her beautiful eyes appeared more sunken, and lines stretched across her cheeks
with every smile. She couldn’t walk as far as before, and her back began to bend with every step. When I held her hand, I could feel it grow rough, veiny and frail. “I’m so comfortable with you.”, I told her, “you make me feel warmer and brighter”. “You’re not too bad yourself” she said, and then a smile made her lips melt, “I feel that way too. Like I did with Joe, is that awful to say?” “I think that’s only natural to say”. She passed away that night, feeling bright and light and unafraid. She was buried by the groundskeeper, who asked no questions after I paid him some hush money I had saved for a Leaving Cert holiday. I don’t think he was too bothered anyway, which is a bit worrying. The only attendees were myself and my friend, Liam, who asked no questions because I asked him not to. He was quite good at that and even bought me a muffin to try to cheer me up afterwards. I went back later on, on my own, and carved ‘2020’ under her name, wondering should I lie, but I felt a bit funny and I didn’t fancy it.
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