Oom Jos by Natasha Theophilou

Oom Jos BY NATASHA THEOPHILOU

Oom Jos, a small man, died and his how made death Walk in shoes of life through everyday steps with me And expose in fresh young faces the underlying bones That the undertaker introduced us to in measured tones, he took us through procedures, choices to be made, explained

(everything else in your life was contained in a cupboard In files and files and files a life embalmed in a cupboard that detailed precisely your what and where and how In lists and diagrams and receipts and notes and files)

Except your death

And so we sat in the afternoon sunned room, a muraled wall Autumnal forest in orange and brown with leaves dropping down Symbolism clear to all, and thus comforting, And discussed graves with the undertaker - the 10-year or the 30-year plan “So what happens after 10 years?” I ask, innocent “The bones are taken out and put together in a charnel house” He answers professionally, the right mixture of matter-of-fact And sensitivity

And floundering and bound together with horror And grief we your family discuss what to do about the floor Where you lay The undertaker – Vince was his name – tactfully And matter-of-factly imparts he went to the mortuary And Oom Jos is not presentable, so we cannot see you to say goodbye We get the best cleaner in, the one who works for the police, and real Hagenese He’ll remove the carpet, disinfect, remove the floor beneath if necessary -

We discuss the pass for the rubbish because once again we cannot find it As we walked into the flat, unlocked it with the key from the police and smelt you - luckily we are used to facemasks now And saw the sunny sitting room a carnage of papers and clothes A desecration of who you were I charged into the room and began to clear in madness to restore

order and who you were - what the others did I do not know We found your undies still packaged from the drycleaners white as angels’ wings, and washing-powder advert clean

Backtrack: The police came to us the doorbell rang And my husband said he knew at once because we had phoned and phoned and phoned and could not get though

And he opened the door And I came down the stairs And horror stepped in –sadness and knife-twisting grief, We knew, but well-regulated, So the putrifying way of all flesh was disguised But now “The horror! The horror! The horror!” on pages And in films rose off the screen And stepped in with the police a broken door A newly made key And two moist marks on the floor

where you had lain papers everywhere and clothes The NRC Handelsblad in two neat piles going back a year

Every day You went downstairs three flights And collected it until the 24th We could precisely track the days The 28th was the last time you noted What you ate, the last time the battery of egg timers Went off - like everything you had reserves About 20 egg timers of all shades and degrees Everything regulated, OCD, was what we said,

what I said, tritely, but perhaps a sanity because you knew war as a boy, and that when the colloquial waves and storms of Fate crash over you Sanity lies in small things, small, human spaces

You were small The youngest of four boys All older, the eldest in particular you talked of often: “His reports were phenomenal, his essays read in all the classes” “He was an extrovert and good at everything – except sport” impishly Proud still after 60, 70 years, four tropical boys in shorts standing tall, and it was from you we heard for the first time what happened to him, your oldest brother, the flower, the saint (in the rest of the family it was silent, vague)

The Burma Line

And after the war, the family in photos, Three brothers only, now all small With grief, and with what they learned under the Japanese - to keep your head down

Oom Jos remained small, and not particularly successful He saved up and bought a flat, cash down, He was all we had in family on that side in the land And we were fond of him, loved him in little ways His presents were impeccably wrapped, generousity itself, pedantically precise in knowing what we wanted, we bellowed wish lists down the phone

And each time you came we discussed afterwards what to do Because you refused an old-age home Refused help, independent and cross-grained You boasted that you’d only once asked for assistance From one of your neighbours - the flat was full of ingenious Devices for putting on your stockings and going out of bath (We afterwards pulled the handles stuck with kit and plasters from the wall, the tiles under came off, we all….laughed) The egg timers which regulated how long Peas, meat, instant potatoes were on, a box constructed of cardboard containers with drawers for different sorts, sizes of plasters, stiff Sad biscuits standing tall in cut-off plastic containers so they didn’t fall.

Sanity lay in small things, small places Until, in your teacup kingdom of old-age, It sometimes slipped and spilled

And envelopes labelled “plaster covers” Turned out to be the tiny transparent rectangles and squares you remove when you put a plaster on, preserved carefully.

The funeral also was tiny our family and one other, his neighbours, Who had been away the last two weeks, You lay there we saw A kind note offering help from her and he had bought the deep freeze vegetables Oom Jos accepted at the door, Before they left, we know he must have known then That he could not go on, the end was coming

But he said nothing

It was easy for you to give up, stop doing things because of old age, Something you were an expert on We found 15, 30 books on health, and getting old, and the doorstop Family Guide to Health all read, pertinent places marked Seeking out and buying the best, your Bible the Consumer Guide, If you couldn’t get exactly what you needed You adapted, made it, gleaned information, sewed it on your sewing machine

Copious reserves, carefully preserved Cardboard boxes flattened, hanging down on clipped coathangers in a cupboard, Little bits of string and old shoelaces Copious reserves, carefully preserved serving a second life holding Folders and tickets of the Efteling Where you went for your birthday at 85….and every other holidays before, Mounted up and mounted up, it filled and overflowed so in the end the carnage remained Around where you sat and lay

And did not phone

But perhaps, we said, trying to trace and make sense, You wanted to go that way

Alone in death as you were in life, Part of a family, but distantly

We cleared and cleared and with it built you again, The man you were, knife-edge trouseredly precise And clean

We built you up again at your funeral Words and music and a photo show, flowers and a small oak coffin And four back pall-bearers with top hats, a poem by the undertaker Another one than Vince as a funeral was running late –

And yet what you did to me Is shake my confidence in life, No certainty anymore, it’s cupped and carried by death a transitory ripple held in the palm of hand of earth beneath us, building, water, sky, And all that does not live

And while I loved you, and am sad in my own way, Ambushed by tears at odd moments of the day, There’s resentment at what you left, The tabula rasa that dumped us in a mess.