Several years ago, I was visiting my husband’s graveside in New Zealand. My people and I don’t have much experience in burial, given that we’re Hindu and tend to cremate. But when Rob died, and my mother-in-law asked me what I would prefer for him, a burial seemed to be the right choice. He and I had never spoken about it – and why would we, given that we were both in our thirties and life seemed to stretch ahead – but I felt we all needed a place to come and talk to him, or perhaps selfishly, I needed a piece of him to still remain on Earth and wasn’t ready to let go.
My family in the UK have never been to Rob’s grave – it is a long pilgrimage, and I wouldn’t have wanted the impetus for that journey to be such a sad one. I would rather they’d come for the glacial lakes, snow-dusted mountains, thickets of beech trees winding into the mist, places I’ve always felt his presence at, rather than the emptiness of his grave. If he could choose anything, it would be freedom and walking the forests and the skies, instead of being shackled to a slab of stone.
A grave isn’t really for the dead anyway. I chose a place that overlooked the estuary, and was framed in trees so that people could hear birdsong when they came to visit him. But even though my family haven’t been to his grave, that doesn’t mean they didn’t feel the pull of it. And so on that visit, my sister asked me to read out a poem to him at his graveside. While there, I thought I would record myself doing so, and I sent her the recording. She could hear the brush of wind, the faint chirping of birds, the buzz of cicadas marking the start of summer.
There was something about that collection of sounds that was far more powerful than texting her about it, or talking to her after the fact on the phone. It wasn’t a voicemail, but one of the earliest iterations of us sending each other a voicenote.
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When I was a teenager, I’d spend all my time in the cold, damp lobby of our cramped semi-detached house, where the landline was located. I’d either call my friends (my mother and the phone bill was always a tomorrow problem), or my friends would call me, and we would talk endlessly. About what, I couldn’t tell you. I just knew these conversations were vital, life and death chats.
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