The Lid

The story keeps on coming back, a man my father knew, that grazier across the river up north a mile or two, a story that my father spun to last me all my life of how a man should not behave when burying a wife. All through the funeral he’d wept . . . the priest there going on about St Peter and the gates through which his wife had gone. His sobbing at the grave, Dad found, was harder still to bear. Then men in suits, the women in the best they had to wear knew deeper down it couldn’t pass, no matter who had died. Extravagance like this was always better kept inside. At last the man who sent his beasts to die on Tuesday gave one final, high unseemly cry and leapt into the grave. ‘Mate,’ he yelled. ‘Don’t go. Don’t go!’ And scrabbled at the wood. A friend reached in to fish him out as any Christian would. The women in their hats stood back. Two men jumped in the trench and skidding on the polished lid contrived at last to wrench him out and lead him to his car. The clergyman intoned ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.’ They heard the broken moans coming from a side window. He hammered at the wheel. ‘Mate,’ he yelled. ‘Don’t leave me mate.’ Not knowing what to feel, the mourners now were drifting off towards their dusty cars. My father always finished here as if he’d gone too far. But I could hear the slamming doors, the hearse without much chrome and dual decisions made to miss the wake and head straight home. ‘Mate, oh mate!’ the man had cried, releasing all their fears. The sound of boots on coffin wood survives them down the years.