It was when I understood Death at his saddest that I saw him change his clothes and strike in different guises.
Death started off friendly, with his eyes somewhere else, before he became unpredictable and transformed into himself.
Death had always had many faces. Most of them old. Some were people in the whakapapa line that you had never met in life; or if you had, you didn’t remember them. Death seemed like a now-and-then thing that grew up around you; an almost expected formality. Three days of playing and getting to know other kids. If you were lucky, you would meet them again in life; if not, you would see them again at their own tangi and dredge up old forgotten memories and reminisce about how you used to throw sticks, kick a rock over a line and play last one there is a rotten egg.
Old women in black ‒ greenery on their heads, leaves in their hands. You’d imitate them with your own ripped-off leaves from a tree or a bush from down the road or by a creek; one kid was the caller, one was the manuhiri and the other the wailer.
‘You kids better shush!’ they would growl. ‘You kids better stop running around!’
Wailing, calling, growling, singing and sitting. Nodding off on duty, although it was a trick, for their eyes would be firmly shut, but their minds still alert and awake. Ever present and seemingly grumpy, they were shutting down mischief before it could even begin. So many cups of tea. You realised there were so many when you no longer had the cuteness of youth and you graduated to being useful, and that meant helping in the kitchen – washing, drying or putting away and resetting all of those cups for more cups of tea.
Death was of no great significance to me. It simply seemed like death was death, and that was its cycle. Death had no real effect on me until one day I saw that death was not just a dead person or old people lying there or talking in Māori or swinging sticks around. Death changed his clothes, and in every single process, Death struck in different guises.
Death became a stalker, a silent thief that no one saw.
Death came with no footprints, no knock upon the door.
That day was so bright, and it was so hot that life itself felt like it was at a standstill. The tar on the road was sticky and had heatwaves rising off it. All that the weather needed to heighten the boredom was tumbleweeds. The world felt ordinary, with nothing amiss. The mundane things we find ourselves doing: complaining about the weather because the season is hot; complaining with just as much gusto when the season is too cold; the grudges we hold, words we don’t mean and apologies we seem to bite our tongues to hold on to (because there’s no worse feeling than being the bigger man). They all seem so petty really compared to the larger picture of life. These are all questionable actions and thoughts when someone else’s world has just ended. The night before, she was lying on the ground fighting for her life, and, unknown I think to the rest of the world, slowly losing it.
Death became his own worker, doing the only thing he does, and he turned his sights our way to take someone we love.
Then Death became a sender of messages, his first messengers were birds, before he became disbelief from the messenger of choked-up words.
My uncle came. Usually he was an upbeat kind of guy. Today he was impatient and needed to use the phone. I felt that something was wrong because my aunty did not come in but sat out in their car. My uncle hovered by the opened door, but would not come inside.
‘Phone,’ he kept saying. ‘I need to use the phone.’
The phone we had was one of those cordless ones, and the handset was nowhere to be seen. I pushed the button to locate the rest of it, but the reply was a weak beep indicating that it had been tossed aside all night, and I would have to rely on my eyes and memory to find it.
‘Never mind, forget about it,’ he said shortly, turning to leave. I thought that he was leaving to do whatever important business required his use of the phone. Instead, he rested his elbow on the door and hung his head.
‘I’ve got some bad news,’ he said, and I could see tears dripping off his nose.
‘She’s gone. She passed away last night …’
‘Who?’ I immediately asked although I had a feeling before he even uttered her name.
‘Our baby,’ he said. ‘Our baby.’
I froze. I couldn’t speak, my jaw dropping to the ground. My uncle looked up, and I realised in that one second that he must’ve been going around all morning delivering this same news. I saw that Death had already sent tohu before the physical messenger: sometime during the night sirens had blared, and before the sunrise there was the call from the bird who screeches his own name.
Death then dressed up twice: he walked as despair and
as tears, then he became the wait for emotions to be laid bare.
It felt like the longest wait ever – a useless wait of nothingness. Useless because there was nothing you could do, hopeless because death had come and there was no clock in the world that could turn back time and make it otherwise. People began turning up in throngs, or solo, and you could see on their faces that they too were wishing there was something they could do to undo what was already done. There were times when there was so much noise that the singing, laughing, talking and crying made it feel like we were at a party – that this was a celebratory get together. Then there were times that it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Times in the silence when all you could hear was a mental clock ticking like a metronome, back and forth, back and forth, seemingly stuck on the same second.
‘No wonder people have so many cups of tea,’ I said to no one in particular, losing count of how many I had just finished. Cups in hands, cups piling up on the table, cups on the ground, cups waiting to be washed – most discarded with a soggy tea bag in the bottom.
Emotions were laid so bare that the only thing to do was to have another cup of tea. I saw death as the waiting, death symbolised by the cups.
As his own characteristic, Death became a patient man.
He brought with him strength to still our shaking hands.
As more family members arrived, Death changed his clothes again to strike in another guise. I saw our family members not as their normal selves. They wielded taiaha and patu in their hands, and although they made my aunty’s tears begin anew, their strength cloaked her like a korowai. They came from near and far to share the grief, ease the pain and unburden from her shoulders the hurt and the mahi. I had never really seen that this was what family brought when death struck. I never realised that their hands, their arms, their love and their very presence were weapons – weapons that provided strength in many ways.
Then death turned into the truth of what we tried to deny;
the coffin was brought in with the darkening of the sky.
And for those few days, death became ups and downs, churning
in a pot. Death became the sorrow, the blame and the riri
for who was lost.
This was not a death that age and time had a hand in. This was not a death that riddled a sick mind or caused a sick body. Nor was it a death that demons had instructed one’s own hand to do. It was a tragic death, an accident. The feelings were all over the place, and the answers were not adequate. Blame was to be had and blame was to be appointed as an excuse for heartbreak, a justification for anger and a way of understanding and seeking closure.
‘I knew her best!’ ‘I knew her first!’ ‘Did you see her last week?’ ‘This is all his fault!’ Sideways glances and hushed conversations; pointed fingers and tones of accusation. Invisible lines drawn; family not friends. One had to hold one’s tongue for fear of it being ripped out, and as the days wore on, more eggshells seemed to be underfoot, warning all to tread carefully.
And for that last night, Death grew a heart, and he brought
with him laughter to encourage healing to start.
Death was there at the poroporoaki as the tokotoko that was being handed around. The sadness that was lingering was lifted as the marae became lively and full of laughter and waiata. The heavy air that had been filled with tension evaporated and all became one again. Fragments of a person shared from different memories made you realise that a person is not just one type of way. This person can be so many different things to different people. She was not just a friend or a mother or a cousin. She was way more than the years you knew her ever showed you. Different ages and stages of her life brought before you through a stick. Here, I realised what Death was doing and why he was in this guise. Here, I realised that Death had a heart, at least for a little while.
Then Death became death again, cold and without a soul.
Death became the lid and the dirt beside the hole. Death became
the teary farewell and the words in all the songs. Then Death
waved goodbye to us and, like life, he moved on.
Death was sitting on a little hump of a hill just beyond the hole, under a small tree. Ironically, I snickered – like what the hell does Death need shade for? Since he can take away people’s lives, can’t he just demand the sun stop shining so brightly? He seemed to be watching not her, but us. I could feel his presence waning, his eyes ready to turn somewhere else. His voice came as a whisper through the trees. My job here is done, and I’m not sorry for taking someone you love.
‘Wait!’ I wanted to scream. ‘What do we do now? You can’t just leave us like this – leave us without a clue!’ But Death had no more to say and was already changing his clothes. I knew that he had many more ventures to make, many more guises to undertake. The answer wasn’t his to give but ours to figure out. Life simply moves on, and we have no choice but to move on with it.
But lost in our thoughts, or lost in our dreams,
Death can come as happiness that at first we can’t see.
Because when Death comes for us, whether we’re ready or not,
he will unite us with those he’s already got.