Gravitas.

I woke up this Christmas Eve morning not in my own bed. Kevin and I had spent the night at his parents' house. It's weird to wake up somewhere else, because you don't quite cotton on. Bumbling back from the loo only half awake, I looked out at the golf course behind the house and thought it was a cemetery. I know there is a cemetery in Vancouver because I was in a phone box opposite it once, vainly trying to get a cab, or maybe it was the crem. But it occurs to me that in Britain we do like to keep our dead among us.
I used to cycle past one of the entrances to the cemetery that backs onto George Road, off Shearer Road in Portsmouth, and in the morning there was often mist rising from the ground, giving it a creepy feel. I went in there last summer when I had a few minutes to spare in between work experience visits. I sat on the grass and ate an apple, my bike propped up against a wall. I found it quite a calming place.
Going through the cemetery on the eastern side was an indicator that the train had almost reached its destination whenever I was coming back from Surrey, I was welcomed by headstones.
The cemetery at Brookwood, near where I used to live in Surrey was a well-known and oft written about one. As you went through the cemetery pales, on one side of the road was the Moslem burial ground where Dodi el-fayed was laid to rest, and then, I believe, moved. On the other side the war graves, neat rows of crosses. There is a whole section here where Canadian service men and women were buried. Right by the railwayline there is a messy part, like a room in a house that hasn't been tidied, stones all higgledy piggledy, a litle overgrown. Why are the wargraves commission not interested in these I wonder. There again it is a little while since I was there.

A stone's throw away from Brookwood is Pirbright church. My sister's and my parents are both buried there side by side and a little way away, our aunt. I guess the verger cuts the grass from time to time, but it's a long time since any flowers have been placed, both my sister and I, and of course Austen, had moved away long since. But I have never been aware of their presence in that place in any case, though I think my aunt was there occasionally. I would always go to the sea to talk to my father and to Victoria Gardens to speak to my mother.

I don't often think about their funerals any more, but sometimes some small thing will jolt me back, and there I am, sitting in the funeral car with my sister and Austen as the undertaker in his black dress coat walks down the road in front of the hearse. That last journey is led by the measured steps of a man who knows the pace of mourning. I see my sons and nephew carrying my mother's coffin on their shoulders. I know that in reality Ben and Jeremy were not old enough then, but in my mind I have sketched them in.

In our intercession we pray for them, 'we remember those who have died in faith, Lord, in thy mercy, hear our prayer.' Do the dead intercede for us I wonder? I hope so, I'm going to need a lot of support to get there.

In Britain, and in Europe the dead are all around us. I miss them.