Toast Me No Toasts

"Well, that's the end of that for the rest of my life!" my mother said as she bustled historically and characteristically over the threshold of the back door. She gave that familiar shake of the body and clothes that people often employ when they've come back in from the outside world, and let the door slam shut behind her on what once contained her working life.

  A most horrific feeling for a moment came over me. It was the more horrific for not really being felt at all, but merely identified as though crossing off a list or checking a box. The sort of dreaded recognition that doesn't seem to come immediately because it seems to take a little time to register - and in that brief period of time during which the proverbial penny drops, the grave realisation is suspended to such a powerful extent that when it comes it weighs heavier than the gravity of a millstone around one's neck as you find yourself drowning. It was as though I were witnessing the tragic story of the ordinariness of someone's life whilst simultaneously realising that it was actually about mine. And I could already foresee the future memory of this horribly poignant moment as it is one day recalled by the solicitations of some well-meaning fool at a dinner party who proposes a toast "to absent friends!"

  And when I picture that well-meaning fool I picture my father. Although I dearly hope that when that time comes he won't be around to proclaim it. But someone will. Someone always is. Some equally justified fool who mistakes the tradition for sentimentality. Who mistakes form for tenderness; mistakes a mere speech for sincerity; and mistakes posterity for caring.

  And I've already witnessed the effects on the generations of lachrymose middle-aged women at wedding receptions. And the awkward momentary silences at Christmas dinner tables. My father's been doing it for years now; ever since the first anniversary of the death of my brother-in-law's father. "Absent friends!" Though I don't believe that he was even for a moment his 'friend'. But it is the lot of such so-called respected and dignified personages as my father to take on the responsibility of this ancient convention. For God has made him the Commodore of Convention; the Lord High Admiral of Responsibility. And sadly such mantles are passed on throughout the eternity of Man's civilised inheritance like an exalted blood-line. There will always be someone like him. There will always be 'an England'.

  "To absent friends!" he'll say. And, year on year, one more number of his generation is added and included implicitly in that momentary facile salutation. His mother, who died of old age and neglected senility in a nursing home; and his sister, who was found dead on the sofa one morning by her grandchildren. She should have seen the doctor about her health. A blood-clot spread up her leg and one night it spread to her lungs. "Grandad, granny's still asleep and we can't wake her up." And the stone-cold church funerals in cold-hearted stone walls, and a blankness and a numbness where you really think you should be feeling something, but you can't and you don't. But the reliable old aunties will break into their tender sobs of reminiscence for weddings of the past, and christenings and Christmas parties and birthdays in church halls; and they smile down tearfully upon the bewildered little ones who gaze up at them in wide-eyed innocence.

  And when I picture an auntie I picture my mother. And an oblivious little nephew stares up at her in confused awe, and she hugs him affectionately as though to adore the fragile preciousness of life. Feels too much, always cries when someone dies, always weakened by the tragic mawkishness of defenceless purity. And when some poor old lady she once knew from work succumbs one day, she is privately touched. "Shame. She was a dear old thing, too.." And she retires quietly to her bedroom where the pressure of her pregnant soul is rent once more by secret tears. And her sadness once more becomes a collective mourning for those that had passed before; faraway long-gone figures in her life whom she remembers in that instant, and the kind things they said to her and did for her when they were alive; all the beautifully insignificant moments she had shared with them in life, and the end of so many eras.

  But one day she'll be one of them. And that sentimental inheritance shall be willed like a madness to someone else in the blood line, to be visited upon them year on year, anniversary upon funeral upon wedding upon baptism upon Christmas dinner speech "to absent friends!". And I have always thought myself miserably capable of such selfishness as to wish my own death before that happens. I should be one of them. One of those distant ghosts of the past, recalled along with my obscure, moribund comrades-in-ether on a dreary grey-dark afternoon, as she shuts herself away and sits on the edge of the bed, sobbing for the memory of how we once were. But I could not wish that upon someone so loved and so cherished as she. I must survive. Even if to carry on living after she's gone would be a hurt only answerable with death itself. And if in the soothing of this pain the temptation of suicide does not prevail, then please, make no speeches - toast me no toasts "to absent friends."

Reviews

[emmajoy]

This is one of the most profound, moving pieces of writing I've read in the Cafe .. a treatise to the differences in death's ethics, the difference of thought and age and all ..

'And the stone-cold church funerals in cold-hearted stone walls, and a blankness and a numbness where you really think you should be feeling something, but you can't and you don't. But the reliable old aunties will break into their tender sobs of reminiscence for weddings of the past, and christenings and Christmas parties and birthdays in church halls; and they smile down tearfully upon the bewildered little ones who gaze up at them in wide-eyed innocence.'

What an extraordinary end to life death is, it's the closing down of a billion components which - for some reason, burn out, some to sweet gentle sighs, some to loud applause and murmurings of greatness. Choice doesn't necessarily come into the equation, we have to die, we have to mourn in our own way.

Sadly we can't tell people not to toast or grieve cos if you're loved, respected, wanted, there'll always be someone somewhere to remember you ad infinitum

Sorry, your wonderful writing, not mine .. it made me think and feel.

[just rose.]

There are so many people on the other side now I pretty much think of it as a thin curtain, and wherever I am not feeling what I'm supposed to feel, I know they're all right there too, but blessedly beyond faux sentimentality. I feel this piece on a deeper level than I can express here.

[ashley]

"And if in the soothing of this pain the temptation of suicide does not prevail, then please, make no speeches - toast me no toasts "to absent friends.""

the biggest pain in death is felt by the ones left behind... and it's a pain i wouldn't wish on anyone. brilliant write, as always. i'm floored by this. 100/100 and it's going in my favorites :)