At the Burial

We buried him under trees so green
they almost seemed unwilling
to take part in it.

There was music.
Trumpet first, then strings,
and later the mariachis,
which should have made it warmer somehow
but only made it more true,
because grief is like that,
it comes dressed in the sounds
a person loved,
and suddenly what once meant celebration
means you cannot breathe.

Then Taps.
Thin and clear.
A sound that seemed to go farther
than any of us could follow.

We stood there
friends, family, people who knew him well,
people who maybe only knew one part of him,
all of us pulled into the same fact.
The priest said the words priests say.
About eternal life.
About the soul continuing.
About death not being the end.

Maybe that is true.
I don’t know.

What I knew was this:
someone sobbed and tried not to.
Someone stared at the ground
as if the ground might answer.
The wind moved through the trees.
Someone laughed suddenly,
quietly, remembering him,
and for a second
that laugh was worse than the crying.

Because he is gone.
That is the plain sentence.

No more his voice entering a room
before he did.
No more his hand on a shoulder.
No more that particular way
he would say your name
and make it sound like he was glad
you had come.

They handed out roses.
Red roses.
And one by one
we laid them on the casket
as if there were still something
we could give him.

As if beauty, at the last minute,
might help.

I remember how careful people were
approaching the grave.
As though death, having taken one,
had become visible there.
As though we might disturb it
if we moved too quickly.

And afterward, of course,
the impossible thing:
the sun still on the grass,
the chairs being folded,
cars starting,
someone asking where to go next,
as if a day like any other day
had not just opened
and swallowed a life.

This is what I want to say now:

Not that he is in a better place.
Not that God needed another angel.
Not even that love is stronger than death,
though sometimes it feels that way.

Only that he was here.
He lived among us.
He laughed.
He suffered.
He loved people.
He was not an idea.
He was not a lesson.
He was a man with a body and a voice,
with habits, with history,
with people who expected
to hear from him again.

And now we carry him
the way the living carry the dead,
which is to say unevenly.
In flashes.
In songs.
In the sight of red roses.
In the sound of brass
going thin in the open air.
In the empty chair no one mentions.
In the moment, every so often,
when forgetting stops
and memory comes back
like a hand to the chest.

I think that is all mourning is.

Not letting the world
turn too quickly after someone is gone.
Not agreeing too soon
to the terms of absence.

Just standing there a little longer,
under the green trees,
while the music fades,
saying silently:

You were here.
You were here.
And we are not finished losing you.