What must it be like to have a second funeral for your parents? Hannah squeezed Indy’s hand and felt her grip back too tight. She reached out and touched Indy’s cheek and Indy flinched. She was standing still, shoulders back as she stared straight ahead at the two coffins on the plinths.
Hannah looked round Seafield Crem. Just eight people including the council guy who ran the place standing to the side, hands folded. Hannah hadn’t known Indy when she had the first funeral, something she would always be sad about. She thought about her time before they met, uncomfortable fumbles with teenaged boys in the park, awkwardly coming out to school friends, a handful of confusing and hurtful relationships with girls who weren’t sure or were too sure, manipulative or militant or distant or stoned or a million other things that weren’t right for her. But Indy was right, the jigsaw piece that made the sky complete.
Hannah squeezed again, Indy squeezed back. She was barely holding on, Hannah could see that, knew her inside out, knew when she was tired or worn down, energised or silly, when she needed to be alone. How can someone know another person so well?
Esha and Ravi were next to them, then across the aisle were Mum, Gran and Archie in their funeral outfits. She had a sudden desire to be in the kitchen with all of them, sitting in comfy clothes, sharing a pot of tea or bottle of wine, not having to deal with death and grief, with all the mysteries.
The chapel seemed cavernous and Hannah wished there was a different way to do this, but all three crems in the city were the same size. She remembered burning Grandpa in the back garden on his instruction.
Johann Johannsson played over the PA, soft strings, sonorous and resonant. It sounded like the tide coming in on a calm day. When it finished, Hannah was surprised to see Ravi go to the dais. She hadn’t heard him say two words since he arrived, always in Esha’s shadow, happy in silence.
He cleared his throat and stretched his neck.
‘Our Pratik and his beloved Giva were taken from us six years ago.’ He swallowed, looked at Esha, and Hannah felt a lump in her throat as Indy gripped her hand.
‘They died on the other side of the world from where they grew up, the other side of the world from us.’ He nodded at Esha then glanced at Indy, took a deep breath. ‘We never had a chance to say goodbye.’
He stared at the coffins for a long time. They had discussed whether to place Pratik and Giva in new coffins, but Indy didn’t see the point, and the crem guy was fine with burning a bit of dried mud.
‘Esha and I are broken,’ Ravi said, voice echoing around the high ceiling. ‘We broke the day they died.’
Esha lowered her head, pressed a tissue to her nose, shoulders shaking.
‘For your child to die before you do is not right,’ Ravi said. ‘It is against the way of the universe. It’s not something you get over, it’s not even something you manage to live with. Esha and I still exist, but it doesn’t feel like we are alive anymore. But we believe in samsara, that our atman will live again once we die. And we believe the same for Pratik and Giva, their souls will go on again in some form.’
Hannah thought about her old quantum physics classes, the inter connectedness of all things, we are all joined to each other in millions of ways, from the subatomic level to the size of the cosmos. She thought about José and his messages, his pregnant girlfriend, the two of them never having grieved for their mis carried daughter. Never having had a moment like this to acknowledge what was gone. We don’t ever die, Ravi was right, we just convert our energy from one form to another, from chemical energy in our bodies to thermal in the crem furnace, to potential energy, molecular, kinetic, subjected to forces from all sides, strong, weak, electromagnetic and gravitational, pulling us apart and together, dancing endlessly through the swirl of creation until the end of time.
Ravi had been talking while Hannah spun off, but he stopped now, head bowed, tears on his cheeks. Esha sobbed into her tissue. A belief in reincarnation didn’t alter the fact that losing your son was devastating.
Indy breathed carefully, ran her tongue round the inside of her mouth, eyes wet with tears. Hannah hugged her and felt her sink into it, squeeze tight and hold on.
Ravi returned to the row and comforted Esha as the crem guy stepped up, pushed a button, and the two coffins descended into the plinths, down to the furnace where they would burn at a thousand degrees for ninety minutes, chemical to thermal energy, game over.
Hannah looked at Indy. She would love this woman until the end of time, until their bodies were dust spreading out across the universe, their atoms dancing in the infinite expanse of the cosmos, their spirits spread over millions of light years of space.