Days like This by Natalie McCredie
It was the first one I'd ever been to, though doubtfully my last. I didn't really know what to expect but I knew it was going to be emotional. Watching my three uncles and three cousins process slowly down the aisle seemed to open the floodgate to what may as well have been the Three Gorges Dam. Isn't it funny how everyone in life ends up going down an aisle in a church one way or another? Shame Helens only trip was being carried in a casket.
My Auntie Helen had been suffering from cancer for two years so it wasn't as if she had a quick and painless death. I was only told when she was expected to have a few weeks to live but something in her fought back and she ended up living for six months rather than six weeks. At the time I was glad that we had more time together but as her final few weeks drew close, I could see how much she was suffering. She was previously so independent but the cancer had become her own personal disability: she couldn't speak properly, walk unaided, clean herself or even eat solid food. It hurt her and it hurt us. By "us" I am not including my siblings or my parents, I don't think it affected them the same way it affected me. They weren't as close to Helen as I felt I was. We both shared a common bond: Art. She taught me how to draw and how to use certain materials. I could happily sit in that wee flat of hers for hours on end, even just looking at the huge box of pencils, paints, oil pastels, chalks and pens.
The first thing I would ask her when I was younger, after the usual "Hi, how are you?" was "Can I go see the big box again". It seems so childish now but then it was all I could think of. As I got older I did become a bit more considerate, asking her if she would like to help me with my art homework or something to the same effect. She also had a strange obsession with drawing the Glasgow cranes saying they were "the perfect cocktail of form, tone and intricate detail". Personally I think she drew them because they were easy to see from her studio room. She even managed to nick my art final, something which I ended up getting back sooner than I would have wished.
Having no one to talk about it to was hard. I knew I wasn't the worse off in the family: Allan and Tam had lost their sister and Jenny had lost her daughter, so it didn't feel right to grieve to them. As a result most of my feelings were kept inside and hidden. I felt so isolated when she died but as no one else did, I didn't cry until the funeral. I didn't want to seem upset in front of my younger brothers. I pretended to my Mum and Dad that I was over it, that I was relieved her suffering had ended and I had gained "closure" at the funeral but I hadn't and in all honesty I still haven't. That is an unfortunate habit of mine, saying the opposite of what I really feel, I suppose I do it because it blocks people out and its so much easier to do that than to actually let people know what's really happening. Sometimes I even deny to myself how I'm feeling by getting myself engrossed in everything else so I don't have to think about it.
The funeral itself was an emotional see-saw. Allan played and sang a song on his guitar that he had written just for her. It made me think of just how much she had done in her life, how happy a person she was before the cancer and how she was still putting other people first even as she was dying. While she was in the Marie Curie hospice she was still joking and making other patients and nurses laugh. I felt suffocated by guilt as I thought of how I'd wasted the last couple of months of her life studying for exams and not seeing her as much as I should. How could I have been so selfish after all she had done for me?
Tam read the eulogy and it lifted everyone. He only spoke of the good parts of her life, her general friendliness to everyone she met and her quirkiness; trying to teach a budgie Gaelic, and her strange addiction to the drivel that is Big Brother. Although this part of the eulogy was light-hearted and trivial it didn't stop guilt creping back in. I couldn't stop thinking about a close friend who had died just nine months previously. I had been best friends with him the whole way though primary but we drifted apart during secondary school, not making a bigger effort to stay friends with him is a regret which will stay with me the rest of my life. More guilt stemmed from the fact that I was thinking of someone else at Helen's funeral. It felt almost as if it was a betrayal.
Trying to think back on the day of the funeral is still painful for me. I think that if I had opened up to someone and if I hadn't made myself feel so isolated I would be able to look back on her life and smile a bit. There are so many things I would change but that I ultimately can't. Most days I feel so incredibly stupid for putting myself in that position but I know now that when I'm put back in that position, which will undoubtedly happen, I'll tell someone and allow myself to grieve properly. Hopefully at some point I'll be able to let go and just remember Helen how she was and how she deserves to be remembered.
