White Lily

When we were children, the school looked out onto a graveyard. Every so often, little more than toddlers, we were dragged from our desks and paraded through. Navy skirts and white knee-socks, shiny black shoes and pigtails. The teacher said we had to pray, our repentance for sins we did not commit. 

Zuigetsu Ikeda, “Lilies” (1940s-1950s), paint.

Maybe that’s why I don’t like graveyards so much. The church was cold and crumbling and when you looked up you could see the lights flickering. I never watched the services, never listened to the verses he preached. I stared through the window, blown and filthy as they were and watched the stones. 

The World War One memorial with the poppies planted at the foot looked like blood dripped onto the mossy grass. It stood higher than all the others and was heavy with the names of unrecovered bodies. There was no path. We walked amongst the dead, brushing our grubby fingertips over the top of the stones. My best friend and I used to stop and read all the names and wonder what had happened to them. Some were obvious. Age. Those graves were the saddest. Over time the overgrowth had overtaken them. Lichen ruffled like dollies obscuring the names. Ivy winding and choking the memories. No one came to visit them anymore or maybe there was simply no one left. 

Dedicated wife, dedicated husband, dedicated daughter, dedicated son, loving sister, loving brother. They were always someone to someone. Some had elaborate bouquets laid by the headstones. Orchids, peonies, sunflowers. I liked the white lilies. 

At first, they looked like trumpets you could pick up and play with. Then they bloomed and spread out like pentagrams, curving up. Even in summer, it felt colder walking through there. We would hold our breath, silent as mice. We didn’t want to disturb their sleep. God was watching.

I preferred cemeteries like the one we drove past on the way to our swimming lessons. They felt less sacred. When I was 16 my family moved and it was right at the end of my street. I still haven’t wandered through it yet. Death means too much to me nowadays. On the bus to the pool, my best friend and I would play ghost hunters. 8 years old and imagining murders. We won every time, of course. 

Walking home from college it made a scenic shortcut. You cut down by the playground, under the unlit bridge and through the stones out of the gate. It stretched on for a mile. A boy once took me on a date there. We kissed in front of the corpses. Most of the stones are overturned, smashed and decaying like the souls they house. But even the broken homes have flowers, letters, ribbons, and teddy bears. 

They are places of love, cemeteries. A place of forget-me-nots and kept promises. On the days when the wind is whipping you can hear their voices caught in the howl, sharing gossip from the other side: ‘Haven’t you heard? So-and-so just moved up two plots down.’

I was too young for my grandfather’s funeral. He liked yellow roses the most, my mother used to draw them for him. He was buried in his hometown. I visit all the time, or at least I used to. My father never showed me where he is now, I think it’d be too much for him. My grandmother keeps it tidy and brings flowers on the anniversaries.

I was too scared for my grandmother’s funeral. She liked fuchsias, bright pink smelly hanging fuchsias, my mother used to draw them for her. She hated mess and fuss. She hated most things. My aunt keeps her ashes in a Tupperware tub in the attic. She used to sit on the mantle but doors kept slamming and things started to move. Now she gathers dust.

I had to go to my mother’s funeral. She hated fuss almost as much as her mother before her. She left a list. 12 red roses, my old writing mentor to do the service, Robert Miles, Patrick Swayze, Take That, wedding band, family photos, wedding bouquet in the casket, wear bright colours and no speeches. She wasn’t buried she was burnt. She came back in a plastic bag in a cardboard box. A teaspoon sits in a silver engraved locket I am too fragile to wear. The rest were mixed with the soil in the big blue plant pot in the garden, by her summerhouse, under the fairy lights. Four red roses year after year. It’s her way of telling us I’m still here, I still see, I am still watching my darlings even if you can’t see me.

That’s how I want to be when it happens to me. A white lily. My body in its stems, my soul in its leaves, my voice lacing the trumpet of its head. Dancing in the wind. Staring into the golden sunset. Peaceful.