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Authors: Thomas Keneally
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released, she would look as she did now. So we watched the men enter and carry her away, and I could hear her aunts and her mother in the doorway of the flat, telling each other that at this hour of the night they should try and control their tears for the sake of other residents. Since I was incapable of it, Grace Kennedy gathered some things of mine, and again I embraced Jimmy Manners and his mother, and my elderly uncle, and we all stumbled down the cold steps together, fleeing the site of the tragedy.
In the car I said to the Kennedys, I'm liquored up. Please don't dope me up any more. I need to be clear in the head.
But they assured me, No, we won't. Promise, Alan. Unless you ask us.
And Andrew shook his head over the steering wheel.
In our country it was customary, even though refrigeration made the rushing of the dead into the earth unnecessary, to bury the deceased quickly. It seemed a denial of God's will to spin out the process, and even the medical examiner's people, urged along by Dr. Colless and Jimmy Manners, worked fast. By Tuesday I was visited at the Kennedys' by Dr. Colless, who brought the news at last that the medical examiner had released Sarah's body. It had been a cerebral aneurysm that had hemorrhaged. She had died of a massive and nearly instantaneous stroke. Hence the headaches, he said—the aneurysm would have caused those before it burst. A tragedy, he said. She should have come to him earlier, and organized the CT scan. Her blood pressure must have been abnormally high for her age group—genetics would have influenced that. Hadn't her father died of a stroke? It was rotten luck. He took my arm in both of his hands. There was nothing that could be done when a subarachnoid hemorrhage came on like that. Had she somehow lived through it, she would have been . . . well, a breathing shell. She wouldn't have been there at all.
Colless must have known a trick or two about the irrationality of mourning, because I did find in this reflection a sort of marginal comfort.
Since I had Colless's word that the system which underpinned Sarah's existence had massively failed, I opted for the bourgeois practice of embalming, which was frowned upon by all but the most liberal clergymen. Inanely, I did not want the most corruptible regions of the body to hasten decay. The Mannerses' local clergyman, within the limits of what the older Mediationist clergy told him, was a decent fellow and it would not worry him. Religion was not frantically practiced in the cities in any case, and most people were intermittently devout. The centuries-old split between Intercessionists, who believed their priests spoke for God not merely on matters moral and social but even on politics, and the Mediationists, who merely saw their clergy as somewhat better informed than the average person on matters theological, was something I had not bothered studying in detail, and so I was unsure what would be required of me ritually now.
I insisted on a pure white coffin, though Jimmy said they were generally for girls. She's my girl, I told him. He had meant, of course, virgins, but then Sarah and I had barely begun on our agenda of marriage. I did not know her as a widower of eighty might know his lost wife. I felt she had taken most of her supply of secrecy with her into premature death.
Jimmy Manners, whom I was beginning to appreciate more and more, and dear Grace Kennedy prepared the flat for Sarah's body to spend its last morning at home. She was brought into the living room in her coffin, and it was placed on trestles. She lay fully enshrouded and bound except for a fringe of her hair and her face and temples.
Occasionally members of the family would adjourn to the kitchen to drink tea or, in Jimmy's and Andrew's case, brandy. All the old friends came to say how beautiful she looked: Wilf and his companion, Paul; Toby Garner, the architect who'd avoided being shot for gaps in walls; the McBriens, Matt having already acquired a good
In the car I said to the Kennedys, I'm liquored up. Please don't dope me up any more. I need to be clear in the head.
But they assured me, No, we won't. Promise, Alan. Unless you ask us.
And Andrew shook his head over the steering wheel.
In our country it was customary, even though refrigeration made the rushing of the dead into the earth unnecessary, to bury the deceased quickly. It seemed a denial of God's will to spin out the process, and even the medical examiner's people, urged along by Dr. Colless and Jimmy Manners, worked fast. By Tuesday I was visited at the Kennedys' by Dr. Colless, who brought the news at last that the medical examiner had released Sarah's body. It had been a cerebral aneurysm that had hemorrhaged. She had died of a massive and nearly instantaneous stroke. Hence the headaches, he said—the aneurysm would have caused those before it burst. A tragedy, he said. She should have come to him earlier, and organized the CT scan. Her blood pressure must have been abnormally high for her age group—genetics would have influenced that. Hadn't her father died of a stroke? It was rotten luck. He took my arm in both of his hands. There was nothing that could be done when a subarachnoid hemorrhage came on like that. Had she somehow lived through it, she would have been . . . well, a breathing shell. She wouldn't have been there at all.
Colless must have known a trick or two about the irrationality of mourning, because I did find in this reflection a sort of marginal comfort.
Since I had Colless's word that the system which underpinned Sarah's existence had massively failed, I opted for the bourgeois practice of embalming, which was frowned upon by all but the most liberal clergymen. Inanely, I did not want the most corruptible regions of the body to hasten decay. The Mannerses' local clergyman, within the limits of what the older Mediationist clergy told him, was a decent fellow and it would not worry him. Religion was not frantically practiced in the cities in any case, and most people were intermittently devout. The centuries-old split between Intercessionists, who believed their priests spoke for God not merely on matters moral and social but even on politics, and the Mediationists, who merely saw their clergy as somewhat better informed than the average person on matters theological, was something I had not bothered studying in detail, and so I was unsure what would be required of me ritually now.
I insisted on a pure white coffin, though Jimmy said they were generally for girls. She's my girl, I told him. He had meant, of course, virgins, but then Sarah and I had barely begun on our agenda of marriage. I did not know her as a widower of eighty might know his lost wife. I felt she had taken most of her supply of secrecy with her into premature death.
Jimmy Manners, whom I was beginning to appreciate more and more, and dear Grace Kennedy prepared the flat for Sarah's body to spend its last morning at home. She was brought into the living room in her coffin, and it was placed on trestles. She lay fully enshrouded and bound except for a fringe of her hair and her face and temples.
Occasionally members of the family would adjourn to the kitchen to drink tea or, in Jimmy's and Andrew's case, brandy. All the old friends came to say how beautiful she looked: Wilf and his companion, Paul; Toby Garner, the architect who'd avoided being shot for gaps in walls; the McBriens, Matt having already acquired a good
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