Add to the memory you keep
Remember when you fall asleep
Hold on to the love that you know
You don't have to give up to let go
Remember turning on the night
And moving through the morning light
Remember how it was with you
Remember how you pulled me through
-I Remember, Deadmau5
I smelling fry plantain! declares Mr Uncle Minsh as if he is announcing the second coming. The crazy thing is that I can smell it too. So I am wondering if I have really finally lost it or if, as Mr Uncle Minsh continues, Allyson is up in Heaven frying plantain for some grand celestial feast and she is sending us a scent from the great beyond to let us know that she is okay. It is either the metaphysics of grief or the efficiency of the Diego Martin breeze that brings the scent of frying plantain to us in the yard of St Finbar's Church. But just in case, I do a quick survey just to make sure that some enterprising vendor hasn't set up a little stand to sell food for this gran zaffeh of a funeral to which our swanky Prime Minister arrives, in the middle of Brian Lara's part of the eulogy and plays a big mas down the centre aisle of the church, with a full compliment of security in tow, you know, just in case somebody were to put God out of their thoughts to come to Allyson Hennessy's funeral to assassinate Aunty Kamla.
But there is no vendor and I am left to take my almost boof from Mr Uncle Minsh that he doesn't see me enough. And this is exactly what I had been thinking in the church as I scanned the backs of many hundreds of heads trying to find his black hat. I see Junior Telfer's red turban, near to the front. I see Wendy Fitzwilliam's high bun towering so regal over everyone. I see Jacqueline's stoosh afro. I see the backs of so many heads that I love close up and from a distance. And I regret again that I don't see these people often enough. You never miss it till it's gone. You never fully understand how much someone means to you until they are taken away. Such is the cruelty of living. Only for you to die and have to leave the people you have grown to love enough to share with them your starch mangoes.
I grapple with the idea that one day none of these heads will be here. And someone will be left to go on.
By this time the funeral is over, but it is not so much of an occasion of mourning and for the rest of us who are still here to hold each other and have another chance to hold on and say, I love you you know. I love you bad, Dionne and Cecilia and Anika and Wendell and Nikki and Stanton and Mr Uncle Minsh. And if only we met under happier circumstances like the birthday celebrations there for sisters and mothers at Veni Mange when Roses would come to make sure everything was okay and then Allyson would come to see if everything was okay and take a minute to sit down and ole talk about one thing or another. And I would sit there and resist the urge to go over and hug up Brian Lara tight and beg him please to start playing cricket again so that I could start to love the West Indies again.
I am all funeralled out, to tell you the truth. I am on the verge of issuing a directive to my friends that they are not allowed to die anytime soon, as I have already fulfilled my dead people quota for the next five years. But the frequency of funerals reminds me to love my friends and family more. To try and be a better daughter or a less flaky friend. To live like the people that we have lost lived.Loving everyone. Giving everything. Smiling, dancing, flag-waving, liming, plantain-frying people. So I hold on to Dionne who I've known for more years than I care to admit and we realise that we share the same fear, that we are losing so many that defined us. That if you looked up a definition of Trinidad and Tobago you would see their faces. That the time for us to do the defining was coming but we share the fear that we do not have the skills. We do not have the energy or the vision. We do not have the things that Allyson had that made her a good media person and a lover of Despers and a limer of repute.
The terror of an unfulfilled life haunts me. The terror of an empty funeral bothers me even more. That I could die without making an impact on anybody. That no one would miss me or comment on my passing like it was a loss. That I could dead stupid and people would forget the sound of my voice or the way I could make un-greasy fry bake. I guess this is why people have children. So that even if they think they have made no visible impact of their surrounding landscape, at least their children might have a chance to do so. Mr Uncle Minsh goes off to talk to someone else. The crowd thins and the smell of frying plantains has disappeared as magically as if it had never been there in the first place. But we know the scent of fry plantain like we know the light of Allyson's face. Life goes on and we carry on until the next time.We carry on playing our life mas, hoping every day to make the kinds of memories that someone will one day recall with love and tears in their eyes. She was something else, yes. She lived.