Sure & Certain Hope

The next day I went to the Town Hall to register your death. I found the Register Office and handed over the documents I’d been given at the hospital. The clerk gave me your death certificate and a license authorising the funeral director of my choice to bury or cremate your body according to my instructions. On the clerk’s advice I bought seven extra copies of your death certificate. I was ready to move on to the next stage, like a participant in a treasure hunt. 

   While I was doing the paperwork with the clerk there was a man hovering quite close behind me. He seemed impatient for me to finish. I didn’t turn to look, but I could hear his quick, shuffling steps, never more than two or three in any direction, before he’d scuttle back as if to protect his place in the queue. When I turned to leave there was no queue. There was just this man smiling at me. He took me gently by the arm and led me out of the room into the corridor. We sat on a wooden bench.

   “I want to help you,” he said, “to understand what’s happening to you.”

   He explained that for some time to come there would be a vacancy in the air where you used to be—a vacancy precisely the same size and shape as you. He asked if I’d ever visited Pompeii and did I know how archaeologists located citizens lost in the volcanic storm almost two thousand years ago? Those empty pockets in the lava were eloquent impressions of lives, he said, and that was how he wanted me to think of the awful vacancy that had been occupied so brilliantly and for so long by you.

   He found it utterly understandable that I was for the moment unable to see beyond the narrow confines of my grief, but assured me that if I allowed time to perform its subtle alchemy, the sadness of a life lost would be transformed into a million happy memories of a life lived. And these happy memories (and this is where perhaps he took a step too far) would pour into that vacancy and then, when it was full, the magic would happen: this trove of remembered joys that was shaped exactly like you would step out of nature, wave a loving farewell and walk away from me into the radiance of eternity. And my grief would end.

   “And this is something I’ll actually see?” I asked.

   “You have my word,” he said.