Memorial Service

It was about ten days before last Christmas. Pam called me at work.

“Hey, you’re clinical mate!” Pam remarked in her typical simple-hearted tune half way through the conversation. “That’s alright, we can find another time. You treat me though…an expensive one, huh?”
 

“No problem!... Me clinical?”
 

“Ooh!... Yesss! That’s for sure!” She said as if it was a matter of fact. “By the way, he’s coming too and he said it would be his memorial service as well, ha…ha…ha… Are you sure you’re not coming this Friday evening?” She laughed hysterically.

“Memorial service? How vivid! Should I say a prayer for both of you? Ha…ha…ha…” I giggled and switched back to a cool tune, “I’m clinical? …mm…mm…mm… No! But have fun with the memorial service. I’m not going… I’m not in your team, it’ll be odd. I’m still trying to meet some deadlines…”

“OK. Another day another meal then...” 

Pam was leaving for a new job just before Christmas and wanted me to join her farewell party for a selected group of workmates. I am glad she took that leap of faith.

Finishing not much work, I decided to leave office at nine. Strolling down the road in that cold windy evening and hoping to have a fast food dinner at Fairwood before it closed at 9:30pm, I kept asking myself over and over again if I was clinical. I stood at the traffic light and experienced an epiphany when it changed from red to green: I’m clinical…again!

“Right! I am. I have been. That explains.” I felt a certain weight being taken off my chest and that I had made peace with myself again. “Do you get me?”

That night I stayed up till very late, reading the messages of visiting bloggers but could not manage to type in a single alphabet against my intention. Instead, I aimlessly went through the photos of a solo journey for the first time since they were uploaded to the computer.

That impromptu journey in last October was heralded by an unexpected rainbow on the second morning but was brought to a crash halt after I received a text message from a workmate in the last evening of the trip. It was like an atomic explosion that exterminates everything in seconds but continues to kill for years to come as the nuclear storm radiates out in all directions. The deadly storm is calming down now but has left a landscape that will take a long time to recover if it is at all possible. “Hope you understand what I mean?”

 

It was already mid-autumn there when the journey started, a time of reds and yellows, and I took many photos with my humble veteran compact Canon like most others would have done. “Yes. Why not? And I was excitedly thinking how to share them here with you guys when I am back.”

 

 As I cruised through the photos, what kept catching my eyes were those of the graveyards. Nothing spectacular or monumental and they are just ordinary graves in public graveyards that are not quite properly managed. Many of them are damaged or have surrendered themselves to time. Even more are not attended to for a long time and I thought: Where have all the graveyards gone…Gone to flowers, everyone… “Oh, sorry for my poor singing.”

 

 

I believe the photos provoked similar feelings that usually accompany with graves and graveyards from the strong room in my head built for my private emotions, emotions of loss and failure, defeat and surrender, emptiness and futility, inability to avoid and control. “Yes, you’re right that the strong room failed me. Not the first time though.”

For some reasons I came across several public graveyards in this wandering trip and lingered around for quite some time in each of them. This was not in my itinerary that was made up afresh each morning there, but why should a person always get stuck to a fixed schedule? Unfortunately, in real life, I am so damned programmed to follow one to a point that I cannot work out another one even if I did grant myself the permission to do so.

“Strange, huh? I bet you must have said. But it was a rather unique experience and I actually enjoyed it.

“But, you’re quite right. It’s a bit of a waste of time and money to fly half of the world to sit with some unknown dead guys when you can do it here free if you’re not picked up by policemen and charged with loitering.”

 

Late October was already cold and wet there and not many people would go outdoors even during the day if the sun decided to take a leave. So, graveyards were like deserted gardens, vast gardens indeed. In those graveyards, what I heard were the chirrups of birds, sounds of grass wavering with the breeze and the clapping sounds of the branches of ancient trees, and my breathing sounds of course. In places like these, one’s mind can run wild and mine did and it nearly lost control. A person is more ready to hear his own thoughts and mine were screaming and shouting like a broken record on a gramophone, repeating themselves as the pickup needle jumped around. He is also prone to searching for the meanings of life and death, temporality and eternity, success and failure. Yet, it is a dangerous act to take place in graveyards because even angels cannot promise a comforting answer.

Luckily, I am not a philosopher, so I could only ruminate about the whys and ifs and promise myself with the shoulds and woulds to a point that I just had to shout at my own face: Shut up for goodness sake!

 

 

Reading the epitaphs on the gravestones, I started to learn the stories of these foregone people. These words condense the lifelong story of love, achievement, sacrifice, grace, and probably sorrow and disappointment of these people who may not be known to anyone now. Yet, at those moments, they touched my heart and I felt as if they were telling me their own stories face to face. They seemed to tell me that life is just a brief happening and it comes and goes before the person has actually lived it out.  Very soon, like what the Old Book says: Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was… and what it leaves behind are only mumbles of the person’s good deeds that try to linger on as long as the carvings on the gravestones survive. I did feel despondent about this possible reality but reckoned it was inevitable.

 

Thinking back now, I wonder why I should feel their vague presence there if our lives all end at the gravestones.  I guess it might be my emotional projection onto their stories that makes them exist beyond their epitaphs. But why did I have such projection at that time and place and why is it still playing the trick? I do not think I need a psychoanalyst to ease my mind or to muddle it more. As I know, very often, the more my emotions are running unchecked, the more I coerce myself into repeated false reasoning to put back some order. Well, it does not always work that way and sometimes it causes disasters. Still, I wonder it would be nice if I can also reappear once for a while after my life finishes at the gravestone, though I gather miracles are a rarity.

Anyway, I am honored to come across these people whom I have never met before and they should be proud of themselves if they are still around in a different dimension of this world. They offered me that little reassurance and consolation I desperately needed last October and that evening after having a lousy dinner at Fairwood. There are people around me while I am still walking down this section of the road; few understand and even fewer just listen, they were the very rare exceptions. 

 Spring has half gone already and kapok trees are shedding their red flowers. Very soon, their silvery silk will dance all over the sky like the new snow. I think it is about the time I should allow myself some new sprouts, otherwise there won’t be yellows and reds later in the year.

“Are you clinical?”

"Don't worry. My memorial service is not due yet, I would believe so. If you know what I mean."