November graveyard with a robin.

The sun shone on the snow-covered graveyard this afternoon, a place where the atmosphere was heavy with memories, sadness, longing and hope. Beside the open grave that we gathered around in heavy coats, scarves, and muddy shoes, freshly excavated clay was piled high ready to be moved. For twenty minutes we stood, not realising how the cold was spreading through our bodies.

 

Most of the souls gathered focussed their distracted minds on a cheeky, impudent little Robin whose breast was the colour of the mourners’ ruddy cheeks. He perched on the frosted headstone during the proceedings, watching for worms in the freshly dug clay. Several times he flitted down into the grave and stood on the coffin to pull a stringy worm out of the side of the deep grave: there wasn’t much that anyone could do about that, but no-one was dismayed or offended.

 

When the family departed silence took hold of the graveyard once again, a silence made all the more intense by the thick snow that covered everything. More birds came down from the trees to feed at the buffet laid out for them when the gravediggers had filled the grave, leaving behind them an oblong pile of worm-rich clay in the midst of the circumjacent snowy fields.