Stuff and Things
I am good with words.
I am often asked to write and read for weddings and funerals. I don’t struggle to speak in front of people. Even when sadness is choking me, I manage to speak clearly and project – not just the words but the feeling, the sentiment.
This time though I knew it was different as soon as I stepped up to the lectern and looked out at the sea of faces who were here to remember them. But I began anyway, what else can you do?
“It never occurred to me to stay,
From the beginning I planned my getaway.
I swallowed the idea that there must be more,
As soon as I was able, I was out the door.
Everything I needed stuffed into a hiking pack.
Her waiting on the old 250, I jumped on the back.
Off down the A12 clinging on and feeling free,
I thought this was the beginning of me…
Turned out I was wrong,
It was nearly the end.
I thought success was measured by the stuff you had.
I was terrified that my life would be small,
That I’d be seen as a failure by you all.
So I gathered stuff around me, collected the things,
Never understood why my heart didn’t sing….”
At this point I looked up from the page. I stared out. I met people’s gaze. Every pew was taken, no standing room either. People crammed in and peering through the doorway, others leaning up against the cold stone walls.
I crumpled the paper into a ball and shoved it deep down into my pocket. Took a deep breath and started again.
“Look, I’m not here to preach to you. There’ll no doubt be plenty of ‘God’s’ word read and spoken today.
My poem was written to explain why I left this town. Why I never looked back. I was chasing success. Which I measured against what they had.” I gestured toward the two coffins to my left. Pristine and silent lying beside each other. “Or, to be more accurate and honest, by what they didn’t have.
I thought their lives were small and I thought that meant something bad. I thought it meant unhappy, unsatisfying. I thought it meant lacking, unimportant and without purpose. I thought it meant they would be forgotten and that they didn’t matter.
But look at you all! I mean good god!” I glanced at the preacher “sorry.”
I cleared my throat.
“They didn’t have a lot of stuff, they never had a great many things… but there’s no failure here. Sure, times were hard. Some weeks they didn’t know if they would make rent, or they’d skip meals so that we could eat.” I nodded towards my sisters.
“Because we didn’t have a lot, I tried to get it all.
But I missed the point didn’t I?
I missed the whole damned point!
Look at what they had, look at what they created!
A Community, a family, a place of safety and belonging.
Sure to some it looks like they’ve left us nothing – not even enough to pay for a coffin each… huh! We’ve rented these. Just like the houses throughout our lives, these are just temporary homes.
But maybe I am just realising that that is the point. You can’t take ‘things’ with you and a load of ‘stuff’ is no use to the people you leave behind.
What they have left, their legacy of love …Their lives were not small. No, their lives were not small. Because even after death they live on. Their names won’t be written in the history books or carved on buildings, but they are forever etched in our hearts, in this place, in the lives they touched, your lives and mine.
They leave no stuff and they leave no debt.
They leave love and hope and a gaping chasm. A chasm which can’t be filled with any amount of stuff, a chasm so wide it proves their lives were no small.
This great dome of love that shelters us all. Built by their hands through hard work, long days, late nights, in the sweltering summer and the freezing winters – they laboured, without complaint.
For us, genuine selflessness.
And I thought I needed more goddamn stuff!” I didn’t look to the preacher this time.
“more things, more drink, more drugs, a life that was bigger, faster… better… It never occurred to me to stay. I didn’t realise that this, what they’ve created here, this, them, you … there isn’t more than this!
There isn’t more than this, and there doesn’t need to be, because this is everything!
This is everything… and I am too late to tell them that I am sorry. That I was wrong. That I missed them every single day but I was too proud to say so. That I was too proud to come back.
Now here I am, 35 years after I got on that motorbike looking for life and love … and it was here all along …….fuck!”
