Farewell

Farewell

August 2023

St Cecilia’s Church, Cambridge

B RIDIE

B ENNETT STANDS

at the graveside of her husband and becomes Bridie Brennan again. Just like that. She takes too much of the earth to throw at him. And it sticks to her damp palm. She wipes the wet mud on her coat, smearing it by the pocket. An inelegant goodbye.

Oliver puts his arm around her. She wonders if he is also using her coat to un-mud his hands, but when he gives her shoulders a squeeze she realizes he is trying to comfort her. To be strong for her.

Some of them came, some of them didn’t. The women. A few were bound by common courtesy, having been colleagues or friends’ wives. Those that didn’t come she likes a little better. Most of them hadn’t bedded her husband in twenty or even thirty years, but still, knowing that they were in attendance at his funeral was the final humiliation.

The priest concludes the committing of the body and people begin to turn to their cars. Off to The Hound for the wake, to turn dry sausage rolls over in dry mouths. The

Hound isn’t a nice pub, but it was hard to find a function room near the church on a Wednesday and they had to settle for what they could get. Bridie wants to get there late. People will presume she is dealing with something at the graveside, but in truth she is ready for the day to be over.

It is supposed to happen on a grey day, isn’t it? A funeral. Lightly spitting rain and overcast skies for the end of your life, for your sad mourners. But today is a glorious, hot summer’s day. Bridie is boiling in her coat, but she keeps it on because being encased in it makes her feel safe.

The people gathered around the grave begin to leave, Oliver heads off to bring the car around for her. She watches her son walking away in his smart suit. Oliver was fifty-five this year and he is beginning to look it, little flecks of grey in his dark hair. He has always been a good boy, a child with a gentle soul, with a kindness that was absent in his father. From the day she met him, Bridie has not once regretted the existence of her son. He always tells her the truth; he admitted to her when he’d smoked his first cigarette, as though she were his personal confessional. He has always looked out for her, checked on her. He brings his daughters to visit even now that they are in their late teens and have much better things to do than visit their nan. All the best parts of her and all the best parts of Alistair are combined in him. And as he disappears around the corner now it is just Bridie and Alistair and the box.

She pauses, wondering if she might finally cry. It was embarrassing not being able to cry at her own husband’s funeral. She touched her tissue to her eyes a few times, just in case anybody was looking. She cried when Ferris passed. She cried for weeks.

Well, goodbye, Alistair

, she thinks. And goodbye to Bridie Bennett, too

. She is relieved that she has this slender opportunity to be Bridie Brennan once more, to begin again, unburdened by being Alistair’s unloved wife.

As if sent by St Expeditus himself, a blackbird lands at the side of the wide-open grave. It pecks at the ground. You kept your promise

, it reminds her. Even if he didn’t keep his

.

Cras

, the bird says. Cras

.