The House That Death Built
A Bereavement in Derry
The dream starts with a sense of embarrassment. We walk along the pavement in San Cristobal, making our way back to the hostel before the afternoon rains hit. He’s laden with a rucksack, and the back of his blue corduroys are slipping down his hips. Children giggle and point to the crack of his ass. His skin is so pale. A straw hat protects the vulnerable bald spot at the top of his head. I trail several feet behind him, dragging my little bag on wheels, cursing the ridiculously loud sound the wheels make on the pavement, and wishing I could speed up time. He’s hurt my feelings, hurt my ego, and I’m sulking as I trudge behind him. He doesn’t know how badly my feelings are hurt; something stupid and caustic said in an instant; not really meant. I punish him for nearly a year after. All seems such a silly, sad waste now. Toughen up, for fuck’s sake.
The dream starts with a fine summer night in the main square of Monterey. Music wafts from the opera hall. Children fly by on bicycles, and couples, young and old, stroll along, holding hands. I’m encouraging myself to fall in love. I fall in love.
He remembers dates. He remembers everything, though not always accurately. He remembers the day we said, ‘I love you.’ A year later, he brings me a rose to commemorate. I never remember the date. It was sometime in August; he was in London playing best man. I was in San Antonio, playing at moving on. We were chatting online, skirting the words. He said, ‘ring me.’ I rang, and after some preamble, he said it. I said it. It was magic. Christ, I miss him.
I am the one left behind. Being left behind is a pattern for me, but this was the big one. This was the one that knocked the wind out of me; that demolished me. I am in pieces. I do not know myself any longer. He is gone for good, buried in the ground, no more than the three miles from where I sit right now. I cannot bring him back. I cannot bring myself back to who I was with him or who I was before him. I am left with fragmented pieces of me, spinning chaotically. I am startled by photos of him. They always make me cry. His gravesite makes me cry. My memories make me cry. I am crying now.
This is the house that death built, where a woman spends two years learning the ins and outs of bricks and mortar. Here she learns of wills and probate, mortgages and dry rot. Here she furiously works to finish what was left unfinished. A transformation takes place. I walk through this house and scarcely remember how it looked when I started. I don’t quite recall the room where he died or the hallway where he was so obscenely, so clumsily, carried off by the funeral directors. I only recall the feelings. I sleep in the same bed, within the same four walls, that we slept, talked, comforted, scolded, and all too rarely made love. But the room has changed entirely and painfully for the better — such a terrible thing to say, but aesthetically, accurate.
The house is beautiful. The bay window in the sitting room and the two large windows of my bedroom look out over the River Foyle and across to Derry’s city side. Perhaps not the most spectacular of skylines, but at night the lights are pretty, and to the right, the hills of Donegal are gentle and comforting.
Now my memories flow. I recall only a few weeks before he died, he was so fragile, but in a last-ditch effort at denial and a desperate search for ‘normality, I sat him in the car and drove him to Grainne’s Gap for a panoramic view of the city. We couldn’t stay long. He didn’t stay long. If I look out my window, to the right, I see Grainne’s Gap. I wish I could touch it.
