Yellow is the colour of mourning in China, I'm told,
but here in Bradford we dress in black
and put on long faces,
sitting on hard pews remembering the man
the priest refers to all the time as
our brother Melville.
It's amazing
how many have made it here to church
this Tuesday afternoon.
There's the usual crowd from all the meetings
he used to come to,
sitting sober and solemn in their Sunday best
such as it is;
you wouldn't believe how much casual gear
could be in any colour so long as it's black.
And on the opposite side
a couple of his drinking buddies;
one has hitch-hiked all the way from Ipswich.
They call him Bobcat
but he doesn't act at all wild,
though some shift uneasily in their seats
when he participates rather too audibly for their comfort
as the spirit moves him.
It is not the Holy Spirit that makes him so emotional, of course.
He injects a note of reality into the proceedings,
for all his indiscipline;
this, after all, is why we are here:
his interjections seem to me like true acts of worship,
especially when he cries out “thank you” at something said which touches him
and the priest replies, gracefully, “you're welcome”.
It would be good, I think,
if one of us had been asked to testify on what he meant to us,
for it's clear that this priest knew him hardly at all,
except as someone who'd knock on the back door to cadge the price of a pint.
I brought the poem I wrote when I heard he had died,
not really expecting there'd be a place in the service
for me to read it, but hoping all the time,
I could give it to someone who might identify with it.
In the end I hand it to Ben
when I drive him to the cemetery.
He looks over the first page cursorily.
“That's good, that is,” he says eventually,
and rolls it to put in his pocket.
“Hand it on to anyone you like,” I say.
“I will,” he says, and I believe him.
But Bobcat is the only one
who really seems to know
what it means
to have a friend taken to the grave by booze
because he's living there now,
right in the battlezone.
It is so unfair.
Melville hadn't taken a drink for a day at least,
and this is what killed him:
withdrawal convulsions.
The security guard found him lying across the door
of his room in the hostel
and called the paramedics,
but when they got there he was past saving.
If he'd gone out drinking that night,
or if he'd accepted the help available all round him,
or had kept up his meetings,
we might not be here,
mourning a young man of 46 who had so much more to live for,
who gave us so much to love for.
But then it's idle
worrying about “if only” or “what if” or even “why”.
He's gone to a better place,
we tell ourselves,
and I believe it's true.
Outside the church,
the congregation flows around Bobcat
like he was some kind of industrial effluent with a bad smell.
Somehow, he gets himself
a few miles away to the graveside,
He shouts at an embarrassed section of mourners
at the graveside:
If you ever think I've forgotten him
you just come and tell me.
Determined they should understand,
he repeats it:
If you ever think I've forgotten him
you just come and tell me.
Not knowing how to respond
to his very real pain,
trying out words in my head
that might help him avoid following in Melville's footsteps,
and failing to find anything
that wouldn't be an insult to his humanity,
instead I hold out my hand in silent friendship.
His grip is amazingly strong.
And then he taps me for a quid.
I smile and shake my head
and he looks at me back, straight in the eye,
seemingly with no malice.
How was it? someone asks me
when I have driven away.
“How was it?”
I can hardly say.
But I take off my dark clothes
and wrap a yellow silk tie around my neck
in recollection of the sunshine
Melville brought into my life.
Mourning ends; life goes on.
There's a meeting at my church
where I think they may be discussing Section 28,
but before I go
to preach a gospel of love
of all the myriad shades and colours
of human personality our world is blessed with,
I try to write these few, inadequate words,
hoping there'll be time to read them later
to a group of people who never knew him
when I arrive close to the end of the writers' group.
And try to let the memory of his laughter
dry up the tears I haven't got round to crying yet.
February 2-8, 2000
