Vision

Its only science and art you believe in, but the note found tacked
to the refrigerator gave a different view. I hate hypotheses except my
own

"Last night I dreamt I was in the small church by the station in my
hometown. The day was warm like a fine June, and the faint wind that
carried the heat and sounds of summer, blew with drifts of dust across
the open car park. It seemed a little strange because they built over
that car park with a new multi-storey over a decade ago. Inside the
church I was observing the grief at the requiem mass for the young man,
it was spilling hopelessly like the fractal beams through the stained
glass. This also seemed strange. The pews seemed too empty, the coffin
too small, and the chief mourners comprised only of the young man's
mother, and her infant son who gurgled softly in her arms. "How sweet,"
I thought as the infant reached out to touch the coffin of the brother
whom he never knew. This was too strange, even for a dream. We were
having the funeral all over again. My hands were still moist from the
soil I threw into the young man's grave nearly seven years ago. I
walked up the aisle towards the coffin that lay not in the floral
carpet I remembered from my schooldays, but in the soft film of soil
that still encrusted the wood, which had over the years been stripped
of its polish finish.

Kneeling before the altar that was wrapped in muted light, despite the
still shining, smiling sunshine, I began to feel encumbered by the
inevitability of the past. Could I take old Father Time's knife,
un-carve the songs of past ages, wipe away all traces of the verses of
sadness? I ran my finger over the old coffin, dislodging one of the few
remaining fragments of varnish, then wiped the damp soil from the brass
plate, to check that this was the same casket that had borne the young
man six years before. The name was there as it should be and the dates.
As the darkness of a warm and loving night fell, I began to understand
and the mourners went outside into the electric light. I sat on the
steps of the altar with Jonathan, who was as always clad in a pure
white linen alb drawn to him with the soft cord of his cincture,
waiting for the men who would carry the coffin to the cemetery for the
second of many times. It was then that I realised something else was
very different this time. The crucifix on the coffin lid was no longer
there.

I knew what would happen down in Hanford Cemetery, all over again. The
screams of anguish as they lowered him into the ground, the red roses,
the prayers. "Hail our life, our sweetness and our hope. To thee do we
cry poor banished children of Eve. To thee do we send up our sighs
mourning and weeping in this vale of tears. Turn then most gracious
advocate thine eyes of mercy towards us and after this our exile?" Just
let them go man. Let the children slip away. Whisper that Haiku to
punctuate the sticky stream of passing prayers. The tides of iniquity
have clouded your vision with clotted blood. I can feel you coming
closer every day, seducing me with songs of sanity.

This is Jamie's twilight world; the church of Saint Dunstan on the
night of a wake. The doors open just a fraction to let in the fragrant
evening and my friends are walking towards me, Christiaan with heart
beating again; Matt and Richey resurrected from the torn car wreckage;
but the one who speaks to me is the young man who leads them all still
dressed in burial suit complete with medals. He speaks of the end of
all things. He speaks of leaving the sadness and joy.

"Stay with us," he asks softly. "Night will soon fall" and before these
words have left his lips, no longer tinged with the cold blue of death,
the dark has indeed begun to descend