Cancer 103

Something I have very occasionally done when I am troubled is visit Heage, where I was born. I walk around my childhood haunts, see the windmill, walk past the house I was born in, and visit the churchyard, where I know an increasing number of the people buried there. Some of them are people from the village, some the parents of school friends (and by school friend I mean person I went to school with, not necessarily a friend, but you do get to know those you were school with for 6 or 11 years), and a few are friends and acquaintances (quite a few contemporaries have died during my lifetime, most are not in this churchyard).

Sometimes I look at a gravestone and wonder if the person is the parent of a school friend. They have the same surname but we never knew their first names, it was always Mr or Mrs such and such. There are graves with one person’s name, with the space for the spouse. I sometimes wonder what that spouse is thinking, as though the grave is waiting for them to die.

I went for one of my walks yesterday. I had planned a ‘long’ one, walking around the village, a few muddy fields, but mainly not muddy roads. It didn’t work. My walking limitations came to the forefront and I didn’t even make it to the house. I ended up doing a short circular walk through some of the muddy fields and round to the churchyard. The walk did take me past the remains of a pond where we used to collect frogspawn and newts. By the pond was a well. One day an acquaintance (you know, the type you sometimes play with but not often) fell into the well. This acquaintance could be a bit of a bully, so it was funny to see him treading water in the well panic-stricken and crying before we pulled him out. A bully who loses credibility is no longer a bully. His parents are in the churchyard.

The churchyard has not changed much in my time. It still has the same bent metal gates, rouch tarmacked paths, and many falling or damaged stones going back through the centuries. There are many familiar surnames, both on the ordinary graves and the war memorial, as so many families have probably never moved from the village. There are a few pretentious gravestones, presumably designed so the person can have an important place in their imaginary heaven. Sometimes I wish there was a heaven so the monied people who think class distinction will still be important will be disappointed. Not much of a reason for wanting heaven I know, but it would be good to see the look on their faces when they have to live on a council estate with everyone else. Perhaps I have a cock-eyed view of what heaven would be like, a good reason in itself not to believe in fairytales.

I walked to the graveyard extension, the area which has been gradually growing over my lifetime and looked at the newer graves. As usual, the familiar mixed with the unfamiliar. I sat on a bench dedicated to one 20 year old who was killed late at night in a car accident. I had been talking with him that same night in the pub. It was unusual to see him out drinking. It was his last time. He was 20 when he died. The bench was also dedicated to another person who died in an accident when on holiday with other friends. He was 19 when he died.

Among the people buried in the churchyard is my best friend who died in another car accident when he was 30.

It is somehow selfishly comforting when I recollect the number of friends and acquaintances who died young, knowing that while I probably won’t get properly old (note the optimism there), at least I have lived long enough to have a long marriage, a child and a career, along with friends, the chance to travel a little, and so on. Many of them had none of that.

Sitting in the churchyard was comforting. My thoughts were about the people buried, and how I will soon be joining them – not that I intend to be buried in the churchyard. I have no notions of an afterlife so I think the comforting element was that in the end, we all join the ranks of the dead. It is nothing unusual, there is no avoiding it, every single one of you reading this will die, hopefully at an appropriate time rather than early, but many of us do die early for one reason or another. It makes no difference to the universe. Our atoms were created in the stars, and they return to the ground for recycling. That’s it. Life is a temporary blip in the cosmos.

Graveyard therapy works for me. A few minutes of these thoughts and then a return to normality. I had done the walk while undergoing chemo, with my pump under my arm. I returned home, the pump was removed a little later, and we went for a very nice Turkish meal.