Home again

I picked up John's ashes and his Ted from the funeral parlour. It was two weeks ago today that he died and now there is a surprisingly weighty urn with a stamped outline of an airplane on it (Hawkinge was the site of a WWII airfield).

When I was interested in the Archaic Greek form of the 'kouros', a very stylised youth figure of a smiling young man walking forward, arms pinned to his sides, I read quite a lot about burial and grave rituals. The kouros was often a grave guardian or marker that would stand guard in front of the burial chamber, often cut into soft rocks like limestone.

It felt wrong just to plonk John's ashes back in  his much beloved house. So I spent a bit of time arranging a tableau of the room around his chair the way it was when he was alive. His battered old address book and telephone directory, his box of useful things, two cups for his tea, a blanket and his scarf, fresh daffodils, that last bottle of champagne and his trusty old, much dropped, magnifying glass. And I gathered a couple of chairs round in case friends call in to chat. I even put up a string of Christmas lights that he liked so much - although the insurance conditions are so draconian that I didn't leave them lit.

I also wound the wall clock in his kitchen so that it chimes out the hours. Although he puzzled sometimes to know what time he found it important to know.

Although he is gone his presence is very strong. He would be glad to be back home.

It is strange. I feel as if I have been left a bit like old Charon to ferry John across the rivers Styx and Acheron to Hades. It's a tremendous privilege in some ways to have an almost exclusive input into these stages of ritual and it has taken me rather by surprise.

I'll probably pop in and have a cup of team with him now and then before the celebration of his life in early May.