Spanning three generations, 'Share The Moon' is the family saga of one girl, one moon and three lives; one Spanish, one English and one Finnish. Blended together into a captivating life journey and infused with tenderness and humor, each post can be read as an individual stand-alone piece. To read the complete adventure start from the very first post, 'Share The Moon', and simply work your way upwards. Welcome to my journey on the first Sunday of every month!

Sunday 13 January 2019

Gathering And Remembering


Three long hours have elapsed since we said our last goodbye to our Spanish Papa (see post Share The Sorrow). Mama, Sis, my English niece Zara and I have now returned to the village of San Juan to await the arrival of his body and begin el Duelo,The Wake. Our hearts are heavy as we prepare ourselves for what is to come. At Mama's apartment we hurriedly wash our faces, our eyes still puffy from the many tears shed around Papa's bedside, and then hastily prepare some sandwiches and coffee. No one is remotely hungry but we have eaten nothing since breakfast and it will be a long time before we can eat again. After we have completed our tasks we walk the short journey towards the tanatorio, the mortuary where Papa's body will rest for the remainder of the day, into the night, and then onto the following day. In accordance with Spanish Law, the funeral will take place the first full day after his death. Sis and I have lived our adult lives outside Spain and have never been to a Wake so do not know what to expect. We are in for a fascinating cultural anthropological experience.  





We arrive at the mortuary, located adjacent to the Catholic Church in a separate building precisely for such occasions, and Papa's coffin is already there surrounded by candles and wreaths. Laying inside is our Papa finally at rest. The man from the Santa Lucia funeral parlour is already expecting us in the small office next door, waiting to take down the personal details for Papa's obituary which will be published in the following day's newspaper. Before he does so he offers us his deepest condolences, and we thank him for his kindness; name, date of birth, date of passing, and finally names of family members left behind in mourning; wife, daughters, grandchildren, brother and son-in-law. Meticulously he notes down the particulars for this client and his family and I notice in passing that he is left handed. Sis and I are amazed at the efficiency with which events are unfolding. Papa has not been pronounced dead four hours, yet already The Wake is under way, the wreaths have been delivered around the coffin, and the obituary has been prepared. We are both used to living in a part of Europe where the deceased is stored away in refrigerated lockers for days or weeks, waiting for the family members to slowly gather and prepare for the funeral. Here the wake and funeral is a well-oiled machine taking on a life all of its own. For the twenty-four hours after the final farewell, the needs of the departed take precedence over the needs of the living, and all else fades into oblivion. To both of us, it seems a fitting tribute to the end of a loved one's life. We already like what we see.





Mama, Sis, Zara and I then take our rightful places as next-of-kin on the seats immediately next to the coffin and wait for the whole village to appear. The doors of the morgue are finally opened and in they slowly stream: aunts, uncles, cousins, friends and neighbours from our village, from the next one and the one after that. People that we know from our childhood and people that we have never met before. But they all knew Papa. Here they all are solemnly walking past our small family unit, kissing us on either cheek and Sharing Our Sorrow and paying their last respects. After peeking into the coffin, each person respectfully crosses themselves before taking a seat at one of the many chairs dispersed around the coffin and we begin to talk with one another in hushed tones occasionally wiping away the tears with handkerchiefs that every visitor seems to possess in profuse quantities. The solemn group of people gathered around us on this heavy day are indeed a far cry from the boisterous and flamboyant Spaniards that I recollect from my childhood.





I discreetly observe my eighteen-year old English niece Zara, seated beside me not far away from Papa’s coffin. Freshly arrived on the Island for her gap year just one month ago, she has already witnessed something in her short life that has taken me a half century; the death of another human being, her Grandfather, as we stood around Papa’s bed only a few hours ago (see post Share The Sorrow ). Many of the Wake visitors that pass by our family to kiss us and pay their respects also greet Zara with the words, ‘Que guapa! how beautiful!’ and she blushes in her charmingly reserved English manner. I explain to her that female beauty is a greatly valued attribute within the Spanish culture and that Spaniards readily pronounce their opinions on such matters so she had better get used to hearing this phrase during her year on our Island. ‘What happens if you are unlucky enough to not be beautiful?' She whispers in my ear rather perplexed when the queue of mourners has slightly abated, ’will they then say ‘Que fea! How ugly!’ ‘Of course, not!’ I tell her, ‘in that case they will just say nothing.’ Zara has only been amongst us one month, in time she will get used to the local ways, and after our fleeting exchange is over we return our attention to the immediate task at hand: Meeting, Greeting and Weeping.




We now begin to share stories with one another about the Papa that we knew, and during those moments of beautiful crystal-clear recollections, Papa is as alive as anyone in the room. The person in that coffin has silently arisen and is wandering in and out of our hearts and minds, stopping by for a while to share a warm moment with anyone that cares to welcome him into the inner-most sanctuary of that special place that we call Memories, before returning back to his place of rest. Mama tells us that when we lived in England, he once took a bag of sliced bread with him on a shopping excursion to buy a toaster. 'What on the earth are you taking that for?' Mama asks him, 'so that I can test the toaster, of course!' he replies in earnest. And we smile through the tears. 


It feels good to be held captive to this minute fragment of joy, and in doing so return to the land of the living. Sis tells me that her English husband affectionately called Papa, 'The Mercedes Man': The first thing that Papa did with his retirement lump sum was to buy himself a shiny, new Mercedes. Papa's love for his cars was legendary, he was known at the local garage as the only man who took his car for repairs and demanded to have all the old parts returned to him. Sis conjures up an image of once seeing him happily parked on the side of the road, picking out the stones that had become embedded in the tyres of his beloved car. And again, we all smile. Yes, he certainly was unique. The Papa I best remember is that of my early childhood; newly arrived from my Island and living on a chicken farm somewhere in the middle of England with no idea of what adventures lay ahead of me, Papa would be there to navigate and see me though this new land with strange language, strange customs and strange people (see post Watching The English Part I And II).







Papa was not always from our Island, Mama reminds us. He came from a faraway place on the Spanish mainland called Andalucia and came to Our Island to do his Military Service, La Mili, at the end of the 1950's, fell in love with Mama and the Island and never returned. As a child, I always called Papa's homeland, 'The Other Planet' as it was a place so far away it felt like another world. Even though Papa left The Other Planet to come and live with Mama on our Island, he always carried his homeland within him in the form of the flamenco music that flowed in his veins and a voice brimming with depth and passion. A voice that has been passed down to his half Spanish granddaughters. I did not inherit this gift, but Papa bequeathed me equally valuable riches; eyes the colour of mahogany and a deep Andalusian soul. A soul that also lives within Hugo and Sofia, his Finnish-Spanish grandchildren. And I realise that Papa has not vanished from our lives for eternity, rather he still lives on in his beautiful grandchildren. Grandchildren like the ones I heard and saw in the village this morning. Young and revelling in the luxury of childhood, they are already impatiently awaiting the arrival of Christmas and along with it copious amounts of gifts, just as it was with Hugo and Sofia many moons ago. 






To be continued...

Next post 27th January, 2019:  Down The Chimney

Note: All written content is the intellectual property of this Author. Image material is drawn largely from Pixabay with some small additions from private family archives.

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