My eyes fell on the open coffin, and on a face I no longer recognised. The shrunken grey cheeks, the fallen jaw and the closed eyes bore no relation to the man I'd known. He was elsewhere. In his place was a husk, a dead planet, empty of all the exciting vitality that once fired his existence. Where was that energy now?
The bishop broke into the eulogy, echoing through the Tannoy, ringing round the valleys, bringing in the strays and frightening the wild. With Auntie and Alexis either side I tried to appear calm but deep inside I recognised that hollow on the left of my stomach and pushed it to the back of my mind. The bishop began the lament. Professional mourning women dressed from head to toe in weeds, their wretched faces the colour of putty, snivelled and wailed with all the drama of a well-worn Greek tragedy. As the eulogy issued forth, my eyes met with those of the bishop and he looked at me with such an expression of sympathy I found myself swallowing and gulping and fighting to gain control. I looked at my father lying in the sunlight, holding a coin for the ferry-man and wondered if he was watching all this fuss. 'You want to know what a real man is, my boy? I think he is the one who laughs when he is ready to laugh, and when he is sad, he lets it out in buckets.'
Warm wet tears ran down my face and I let them. Sobbing, I smeared them over my cheeks until Alexis passed me linen. It reeked of mothballs. Auntie and I supported each other, and Alexis placed a hand on my shoulder while those near me turned to look. The men nodded and the women wept. Most were sympathetic, staring straight ahead, allowing me a moment for composure. Everyone except one brick-head, half hidden by a pillar, whose smirk at my discomfort made me wonder just who the hell he was.
The priest sang the closing lament and the service came to an end. Auntie first, then I, went over to the coffin and kissed dead cheeks good-bye. They closed the coffin and we carried it on our shoulders into the daylight. I could feel the corpse rolling from side to side as we walked. We stopped for a moment looking down to the sea beyond, as blue as blue, and the bishop swung the incense burner eddying perfumed smoke into the sky.
A heartrending wail of bereavement went up from one of the women like a signal for the others to join in. A few more prayers uttered by various chums, and we continued to the cemetery. All the way to the grave, the mourning women shrieked and cried out, their hair falling loose from their scarves as they staggered about as though they were drunk or drugged. Men who had known Pantelis were stern, submissive and grim.
Our procession toured the narrow passageways before we laid the coffin, drowning in flowers, amongst the yellow-headed parsley in the valley. My aunt bore it all as best she could but in the moment she dropped some soil onto the lid, she sank to her knees beside the shallow grave and buried her face in her hands, trembling and shaking, overwhelmed with grief.
Total strangers came and hugged us or squeezed our shoulders and offered us tissues. A few passed me phone numbers and addresses; others crossed themselves and spoke into the grave, 'Goodbye, Pantelis. We will meet again.'
I put my own handful of soil in the pouch in my pocket.
As we filed past the basilica, a short line of neighbours were waiting with the bishop. One by one they held out nubs of bread until the pieces filled my hands, then the bishop stood before me and blessed it, took a piece and popped it into his mouth. He signalled me to do the same.
Ah father, dear father, I never once felt you were finished, that you were gone. You are as close to me now as ever and I sense your presence everywhere.