'Bid me strike a match and blow': I uttered softly as I stood quietly by that grave under the watchful eye of Ben Bulben. It was steadily growing dark and people were headed back to the bus which waited to take us back to Sligo. I wanted to linger a while longer in the silence and gaze out towards the landscape that had been immortalised in Yeats's poetry. In Drumcliff Churchyard I stood for a few minutes longer trying to capture that intangible moment of feeling connected for I did not know if I would ever go back. It made me think of death and dying...
What is it about death that frightens us? Is it the inevitable fear of the unknown mixed with the realisation that the end is a cold, lonely and inescapable fact, that our lives are but mere ellipsis, and that the end always lurks near? Like the dying embers of a fire our loved ones turn to ashes and coal dust. As Beckett said in Waiting for Godot: 'They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more'. The night sky was suddenly full of bird's wings and the wind sighed among the trees that stood guard over the spirit world. I missed home all of a sudden.
I had grown up in a religious family. The family used to sit together for evening prayers. Their singing was hypnotic and I would join in the chorus though the meaning of words were unclear to me as a child. Most of the time I felt guilty for wishing to be elsewhere. It was not that I did not want to believe but I felt that religion did not have all the answers. I am a sceptic and have always been. I liked the rituals though: the smell of incense, the lighting of the diyas, the songs, the offering of flowers, the prasad, the myths and the deities. Will I carry on the religious observances followed by my mother? I don't know yet.
What is it about death that frightens us? Is it the inevitable fear of the unknown mixed with the realisation that the end is a cold, lonely and inescapable fact, that our lives are but mere ellipsis, and that the end always lurks near? Like the dying embers of a fire our loved ones turn to ashes and coal dust. As Beckett said in Waiting for Godot: 'They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more'. The night sky was suddenly full of bird's wings and the wind sighed among the trees that stood guard over the spirit world. I missed home all of a sudden.
I had grown up in a religious family. The family used to sit together for evening prayers. Their singing was hypnotic and I would join in the chorus though the meaning of words were unclear to me as a child. Most of the time I felt guilty for wishing to be elsewhere. It was not that I did not want to believe but I felt that religion did not have all the answers. I am a sceptic and have always been. I liked the rituals though: the smell of incense, the lighting of the diyas, the songs, the offering of flowers, the prasad, the myths and the deities. Will I carry on the religious observances followed by my mother? I don't know yet.
Art is in its way a counter- religion. I can live freely in the imagination with no one preaching to me. So, I stand by the graveside and whisper again, 'Bid me strike a match and blow' and hear the hidden voices whisper comfort as I walk back to the bus.
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