The coffin is an obfuscation, a veil to save us from gazing down on a once-living body as we sprinkle the first spades of earth. There they go, “the departed”. Gone in a rattle of dirt on wood, yet present: a corpse in that box at the bottom of the pit, a physical reality, a face we’d known.
At every turn we smooth this moment. With ritual. With respect. But it’s an ending that will come. Every other moment in our world is tinged by the possibilities of what might come afterwards. Death is the ultimate irreversible. They’re not there. There will be nothing more. They will live in our memory, of course, but that memory is cauterised; a life is sealed, to become the static sum of its remembered parts.
Reg, you have been a wonderful friend and you won't be forgotten.
Rest in peace!
