Daniel lived with his mother, at the edge of a village, beside a river and near to a forest. His father used to work in the forest, before he fell ill and died.
After the burial, Daniel asked his mother what would happen to his father now. ‘ I’m not sure Daniel,’ she said, ‘but there is an old story that, for a while, he will lie peacefully in the earth. Then, later, his body will gradually change, into small, very small pieces, and the pieces will go into the ground, into the grass, into the flowers and the trees, into the river and the clouds.’
Daniel thought about this one day as he was walking in the woods. He looked hard at a tree. It looked strong and tall, just as his father was before he became ill. He looked again, and saw that it was just a tree, and he walked on.
He laid down on some grass which had just been cut and felt the rough, short stems scratching against his cheek. It reminded him of his father’s chin, when he had not shaved, and it pressed against Daniel’s face as he sat on his father’s lap to hear a story. He lay there for a time, with his eyes closed, feeling the rough grass and thinking of his father and his stories. Then he opened his eyes and looked hard at the ground in front of him, but all he could see was grass.
He rolled over onto his back and looked up at the sky and, for a moment, one of the clouds looked just like his father’s face looking down at him. And then it was just a cloud.
When he saw the spade, propped against the tree, near where they grew their vegetables, it looked as though it was waiting for a hand to seize it and dig it firmly into the earth, just as his father used to do. But then it was just a spade. He picked it up and put it away in the shed with the other tools.
He went to the river, watching closely as it splashed quickly past. As he looked at the rocks, which all the villagers used as stepping stones to cross the river, he thought for a moment that he could see his father’s feet, skipping from one rock to the next, as they used to when he ran, laughing, across to the other side. Then he looked again, and there was just the river, and the rocks.
When he got home his mother asked him where he had been. ‘I’ve been looking for my dad,’ he said, in a puzzled voice. His mother said nothing for a while, then asked, in her quietest voice, ‘and what did you find?’
‘You said he would go into the ground, and the grass, and the trees, and the river, and the clouds, so I went to look. I wanted to see him again.’
‘And what did you find?’ she asked again, sitting beside him.
‘I kept thinking I could see him.......in that big tree by the forest path, and in the grass, and in the clouds and the river, and in the garden where he used to dig, but....’
‘But what?’ asked his mother.
‘But, like you said, it was only little bits of him. It was only little, little bits of dad....I couldn’t see him properly.’
His mother pulled him against her and rested her cheek against his hair. ‘Where do you see him, or hear him best Daniel?’ she asked.
‘When I just think about him,’ said Daniel. ‘When I’m here and quiet and thinking about him, or when I am dreaming. Especially when I am dreaming. Then he seems altogether again, the way he was.’
‘I see him too, Daniel,’ said his mother, ‘and I think I can now tell you the end of the story.’ Daniel knew which story she was talking about. ‘The story says that after the body has rested, it is then scattered all around the world, in the soil, the rain, the plants, the clouds, everywhere, in tiny drops, all around, everywhere in the world. But then, they begin to feel tired, and lonely. They want to join up again, to come together again, to rest and be comfortable. And they think, ‘Where, in all the world, is the best place for us to be? Where will we be loved? Where will we be remembered?’ And with daddy we know now that he has chosen here and here,’ and she touched herself just above her heart and on her head, ‘and here and here,’ and now she lightly touched Daniel just above his heart and upon his head.
Daniel thought of his dead father, buried in the ground, then scattered around the world and then coming back to rest where he would be remembered and loved by his wife and his son. And Daniel kept and cherished the memory of his father, like a precious cargo, for the rest of his life.
© James Burch
5-9-99.