The Feather in the Fire:

memories of cremation at Shooter's Hill.

In the small clearing was a circle of tree stumps forming a ring of seating around a fire pit. A simple circle of stones with a centre of damp ashes and charred wood bits. In the centre of the ash pile - the dampened-down-from-the-rain ash pile - was what looked like a little wooden craft feather.

Curious, I pick it up. Not sure why, except it seems somehow serendipitous to find a feather made of wood, yet mostly not charred, in the middle of a firepit.

Is this me? A feather-shaped piece of craft wood - mostly not charred, yet whole in the very middle of a pit of dampened ash and charred wood … a grief survivor?

As I brush the drying ashes off the wooden feather, I notice it is painted in a glittery purple paint. This isn’t just a random remnant. It is like a biblical remnant. A commitment. A promise of recovery.

The feeling of ashes against my fingers reminds me …

Ashes. They sift through my fingers. Still warm from the crematorium. This ash dust - gritty as it moves through my fingers, is what remained of my father.

On the day he died, I knew, without checking a pulse, which breath was his final breath. I watched as his breathing slowed, all night. Then, finally stopped.

That final breath had an “it is done” vibe.

My sister or my mom had shaved him the evening before. His skinny, cancer-consumed body held an incredible warmth for the length of time that he had been laying - not breathing - dead, dead, dead as a doorknob, on the grey couch that had become his favourite place to lay in those last few weeks.

I knew his body held this warmth for hours because, after the undertaker came for his body, I sat in the spot where he had laid. And it was still warm. I remember lighting a candle - a gentle light to keep the dissipating body heat company. A gentle light that the darkness of grief would not, could not, will not overcome.

He didn’t want embalming. Just the most simple cremation. We went together: the three Bandara women, to select an urn and a bookmark for his funeral service - to make the “arrangements” - such a curious term for a time when all feels like the exact opposite of arrangement!

DISARRANGEMENT would be a more appropriate term!

A few days later, my father’s refrigerated and un-embalmed body, dressed in a favourite flannel shirt, and corduroy pants with a few cigarette burn holes, was brought out to the Shooter’s Hill Crematorium and Cemetery.

Shooter’s Hill is not a fashionable-funeral-industry kind of place. At least it wasn’t back in 2006. Overlooking the Caribbean Sea, scattered with goats and their scatterings, it wasn’t designed for fancy farewell gatherings for the deceased. It really is a resting place, not a place of drama and the denial of death. My father would have approved.

The normal post-death, drying-out of skin created the impression that my father’s facial hair had grown since his dying. It was eerie. But seemed to point to the life that would continue beyond this day.

After a few sundry solemnities, my mom and the handful of invited guests left.

Errol,¹ the cemetery caretaker was also the “crematorium guy”. He was not used to an audience. Usually this part of caring for the dead was a drop-off-and-pick-up operation between Errol and the funeral home. But Errol was no wallflower. No introvert at all! He was glad for the company as he placed my father’s body in “the oven” as he called it. He was glad to step into the narrative role of expert, the hospitality role of host: telling us what to expect.

“Usually di body tek a few hours fi burn … but he …” he nodded in the direction of the oven, pointing with his chin, “he won’t tek long, choo he so draw dung.” True. He. So. Drawn. Down. The Jamaican term for emaciated. Skinny. (and Thathi was a slim man to begin with - even before the cancer took hold).

There was something very Gospel about Errol, and his unadulterated, unadorned truth-telling about death.

Errol went on to explain: “Fat tek di longest to burn. So on a big man, it might be di belly. But for him …”, again the nod, with the pointing chin, “di head probably will tek di longes’ fi burn. No matta how dey get draw dung [skinny] wid sickness, di brain remain fat.”

The word “fat” here was like a word of praise. An acclamation. He made this pronouncement, this scientific declaration with a kind of pleased, self-confident pride. As though, he had a personal stake in the durability of the human brain. Because, even illness, could not take away from the dense, juicy, fatty goodness of a human brain - an apt accolade for my father’s beautiful mind.

Somehow a comfort to me too - that the flame would not quickly or easily conquer this most amazing part of my father’s earthly vessel.

Unwittingly, Errol brought us a great comfort by speaking to us in this honest and scientific way: no platitudes or hallmark sympathies, thoughts and prayers, sorry for your loss and condolences. There comes a time in any deep grief process where these words feel empty, incapable of containing or addressing the reality of the loss.

For us, the bereaved daughters of a little Sri Lankan man whose body had been slowly consumed by cancer, for us, Errol’s way was a balm.

The final stages of thathi’s cancer were so painful for him that not even morphine could dull the heat of the pain that reddened his cheeks. That same morphine that dried his mouth out, causing his lips to hitch at the top and bottom edges of his teeth - giving him an odd, maniacal grin in a flushed face - a grin I had taken to mimicking, always the clown in the family, trying to make a smile or a chuckle from the most difficult circumstances.

My mimicking grin always would make him laugh. A sad laugh, if there be such a thing. The sad laugh of those who know they may not have many more laughs to laugh together in the future, so let’s take advantage of every chance to laugh together. A chuckle measured out in a way unknown before the cancer diagnosis. Joy, metered on a trailing-off timeline, a restricted runway.

Errol, our tour-guide of incineration, pointed to the chimney of the crematorium, through which a hot smoke was visibly making its way towards heaven. “Tek a walk around, enjoy yu’selves”, again, an odd invitation to the daughters of the dead. An odd invitation to issue in a cemetary: “enjoy yourselves.”

But my sister and I felt, I think, a strange kind of relief: to be invited to enjoy this laying to rest that was happening, even as we stood around. We both believed he was in a better place, where the pain had no power over him. We were both also heartbroken. But mostly, when we are grieving, nobody says “enjoy yourselves”. The invitation felt like a relief to me - an exhale, like the chimney, exhaling my dad, setting him truly free.

It was its own melancholy pleasure: to know my father’s body was busy being eaten by these flames - a much less violent end, than his PERSON being eaten by the cancer. For cancer is violent. It doesn’t ask for permission or wait for consent. It doesn’t exhale. It just gobbles up and spits out.

So, we did as Errol invited. We enjoyed a walk among the tombstones on the slopes of Shooter’s Hill - a cemetery that faces the Caribbean Sea from a mountainside - giving the dead, should they care to partake, a spectacular view of land rolling down towards sea.

Sea which grew darker and darker in shades of blue with depth. Like a visual thumbnail of the journey of grief.

We moved on that landscape as visitors among the free-roaming goats: the permanent residents and landscapers of the cemetery, who kept all greenery in good trim around the tombs and provided little raisinette droppings as decorations. And if the goats were the “permanent residents”, by modern immigration standards, I guess the dead would have been the citizenry.

After some tombstone reading and walking around we returned to check on Errol and our dad (‘s body). Errol gleefully removed a metal rod which was holding a small window closed in the oven door. He invited us to look inside, encouraging me to stand on a brick placed to give height to the vertically challenged.

Inside, we saw a a glowing red-hot ball, and a glowing spread of embers and ashes, marking the spaces where his torso and limbs had been.

“Give ‘im half hour, forty five minutes max. Choo he so draw dung.” Errol our unceremonious time-keeper said, as he closed the window with the metal rod.

My sister, a medical doctor, recognized the metal rod as a piece of surgical hardware. This delighted Errol no end, and he took us to a shelf where metal bits had been recovered from cremated remains: hip joints, knee replacements, steel-toes from the boots of military personnel cremated in full regalia. This collection of charred metal gave me a whole different sense of ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Footnote: medical hardware and steel toes.

We wandered back amongst the tombstones and graves, both observing that as the organic compounds of our father were released into the atmosphere: water vapour, CO2, O2 and carbon ash, he would be ever with us in a different way … part of the air we would continue to breathe.

In that way, his presence would be like that whole and un-charred feather I found in the firepit²: a part of creation to which we would always have access.

Only one letter different:

• feather.

• father.

  

1. Name changed to protect the innocent! (the innocent being those who cannot remember the actual name of the crematorium guy, due to their unadulterated encounter with grief at the time).

2. This piece of writing was an exercise from a writing retreat offered at Loyola House in Guelph. https://ignatiusguelph.ca/loyola-house/

A second piece will be written - from the perspective of the feather.