UNDER THE WHITE LILIES
By Naz Nilsu Ayas
(First Place)
There were more flowers than Martin Blake could count. The place was majestic; the grass was green, greener than any grass he had seen before, and Martin had seen a lot of grasses. The birds, robins if he was right, were chirping enchantingly. There were yew trees everywhere; their branches so mighty and dynamic that their green leaves almost touched the equally green grass. Gray stones were scattered around the field, some old looking and some new, stunning flowers decorating them. Silky black dresses were adorning the flawed skins of those who bothered to come; pearls were coiling around women’s necklines, expensive watches swinging every time the men moved their arms, a few old women were wearing wide fascinators to shelter themselves from the burning gaze of the Sun, playing hide and seek with it, but the Sun, an experienced seeker, would always find them. One thing, however, could not flee from it: the shiny jet-black coffin. At least it looked black from Martin’s perspective/position.
Everything was so picturesque and so exquisite that Martin could not comprehend why people were crying hysterically. He was too young, they said. Maybe he was young, but still, he did not think that it kept him from understanding the basics. People died, there was neither Heaven nor Hell, and life moved on. This was how it worked, and people needed to come to terms with it. Some, however, as he inferred, were strangers to death; today was their first-time shaking hands with it. From his view, he was able to see a child, around the age of six, using the hem of his mother’s black dress to conceal himself from the curious gazes of those present and looking at the shiny cover of the coffin with terror in his dark eyes. It was apparent that the subject of death had never been discussed with him before, or maybe Martin was wrong. Maybe it was discussed, but witnessing something has always proved to be different than discussing it.
There, under the shadow of the yew tree closest to the coffin stood a family of three; the woman was distraught, the child just as terrified as the one Martin had been looking at, and the man seemed to be having an inner battle with himself to not shed any tears, but it was as clear as this beautiful day that he was losing it. He knew them; they were the Wilsons. Sarah Wilson was a firefighter, and it was apparent why she was crying frantically at the funeral. Then, there was Daniel who worked at their local high school as an English teacher, following in the footsteps of his father, Christopher Wilson, who taught both Martin and his brother. Martin regarded the man highly; he was the reason why Martin chose to become an academic after all. Their kid, he did not know much about. The more he observed them, the better he felt about having decided to not have a family a long time ago for the droplets of water falling from the lovely, at least he assumed they would be lovely, eyes of his child and the melancholy on his dear wife’s face would certainly break him. Not that he ever liked the idea of a family but the funeral was making him sentimental, he thought. His own family, consisting of his parents, Lisa and John, and brother, Michael, was scattered around somewhere, probably crying their eyes out just like the Wilsons. If Martin could wish for anything in life, he would wish for his family to be happy, always. Of course, he knew why they were heartbroken, but still, he could not see the big deal. It would be odd to see the corners of their eyes wrinkling with the traces of a smile at an occasion like this, but despite not being able to see them, the image of them crying in his mind made him shiver.
At one point, people gathered around the coffin, creating a dark mass as a result. The priest, fucking Hughes who had a pea instead of an actual brain inside his skull, sprinkled some holy water on the inky surface, dampening it with the supposedly purified substance. Martin did not know why they chose him out of all people for the funeral. How could they forget about the allegations? Or rather, how could they be so shallow as to not care? As the priest went on, the cries intensified; sniffs could be heard, shushing sounds of the parents increased, the Sun burned the sweaty flesh of the people even more, and the silver cross creeping around the priest’s neck like ivy was shining brightly as a result of it. Then, came that famous cliché, Ecclesiastes 3:1-4:
There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
A time to be born and a time to die,
A time to plant and a time to uproot,
A time to kill and a time to heal,
A time to tear down and a time to build,
A time to weep and a time to laugh,
A time to mourn and a time to dance…
Martin really hoped that there would be a time to heal, build, laugh, and dance for some again. He knew some people would move on as if nothing happened just by looking at their faces, hiding them under the black veil of their fascinators, or morphing them into one of sorrow did not do much; Martin could see through them, and unveil their true feelings. Had it been up to him, he would have dispensed with the formalities, and just used lines from Tennyson, and if there is a God then may he bless him, “In Memoriam.” Most probably, they would be from canto 2:
Old Yew, which graspest at the stones
That name the under-lying dead,
Thy fibres net the dreamless head,
Thy roots are wrapt about the bones.
Martin suspected they would be quite unfit and grisly to read out loud at a funeral, but he could not help but think that they fit perfectly with the graveyard, almost like a puzzle piece. The “old yew” like the ones adorning the space, the immortality of nature in contrast with the mortality of humankind… Martin, if he did not know any better, would say that Tennyson must have written these lines whilst looking at this exact place for a more accurate portrayal had never been made, at least not among those that he had heard.
Then another cliché, the reading of Psalm 121:5-8; it was usually Psalm 23:1-6 that would be read, but it wasn’t Martin’s place to question:
The Lord watches over you –the Lord is your shade at your right hand;
The sun will not harm you by day (Martin highly doubted that given the current circumstances), nor the moon by night.
The Lord will keep you from all harm –he will watch over your life;
The Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.
Martin was bored already; this funeral was full of platitudes, void of any excitement. He was eagerly waiting for it to be over, but there was still the Mass to be endured.
After the unbearable thirty minutes of the Mass had passed, the time for the committal finally arrived. There was—surprise—nothing remarkable about it. Different versions of the same story were told, and poems people could not even interpret even if they were asked to were read out loud with exaggerated stress. Emmett Johnson, Martin’s biggest rival in high school who spent his entire teenage years envying him, was reading Shakespeare’s “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun” with dramatic gestures and pauses in between. What the fuck did he know about Shakespeare other than his first name? And was he really that dense? To choose this one out of all the things Shakespeare had written about grief? Really? Martin was sure that the bastard had done it on purpose.
Surprisingly, however, there was one exceptional element: the phenomenal song titled “Wonderful Life” by Black was played. He couldn’t dance—even he was not as deranged as to dance at a funeral—but he could feel his legs swaying with the rhythm of the song, and the lilies of hope starting to bloom inside his chest. It was the most pleasant four minutes and fifty-eight seconds he got to experience.
Then came the last, and maybe the hardest part of the funeral; it was time to say goodbye properly. The dirt was grabbed as tenderly as the human nature allowed, by one hand at first, and various hands joining in later. “He was too young, only thirty-seven,” they muttered again whilst tossing some of the dirt along with some white lilies on the ebony coffin of Martin Blake, who died in a fire which erupted first in the forest next to his house, and spread to the house itself after.
“It was a wildfire,” they said, caused by the scorching heat of the Sun.
Martin had been inside, asleep on his comfy red couch with Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying on his stomach. He had thought that it was very irresponsible of him to move so far away from the town to be isolated from the townsfolk, but as he watched his funeral, he realized that it was more significant to lead a magnificent life (and his definition of a magnificent life was just living life the way he wanted to) than to force himself to put up with these people, the Wilsons and his family excluded. Michael would be missed the most; his brother had always been his best and biggest support. The old folks were distraught, but they would get used to his absence after a while with Michael’s help, at least Martin hoped so; but now, it was time to go for his time was up. He looked towards his mother with the intention of seeing her face for one last time, and as he did so, Martin could swear that she looked right at him with those big brown eyes of hers, as warm as the Sun itself. This time, the Sun did not burn; it illuminated, and Martin was thankful for that.