138, WG81, F64, E131 / NG57, M69, MF5, B2, D6, Frz1, C1, NA1

Ruth Hogan, The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes

Auch dieses Buch wollte wiedergelesen werden und schloss natürlich nahtlos an das erste Buch von Hogan an. Neben der nahegehenden Schilderung der Verlustverarbeitung finde ich die Beschreibung des viktorianischen Friedhofes und seiner Grabsteine mit den Biografien der Verstorbenen sehr faszinierend.
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And what's your excuse?' I ask. 'Your beautiful singing is wasted on dead people.'
Sally laughs. 'It's the best audience I've ever had! Besides,' her face was serious again now, 'singing is never wasted. And it is the only music you can carry with you everywhere and always.'
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Unlike the Victorians who built this place, people nowadays seem to think that cemeteries are morbid places and to visit them for recreational purposes is at best creepy and at worst, tempting fate. But perhaps it is the confrontation of their own mortality that really unsettles them. After all, it is the only certainty that we all share. However fit, fabulous, rich, double-jointed, brilliant, brave, funny or fastidious about cleaning our teeth we are, we are all going to die. It may not seem fair, but there it is. As Thomas Gray reminds us, 'The paths of glory lead but to the grave'.
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But a photograph of your dead child was better than no photograph at all, because memories are not enough. The pictures in your heads are unreliable. They shift and face and scatter like broken reflections on restless water, and one day they may disappear completely. A paper picture is insurance.
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Of course, nowadays, people are rather uppity about the Victorians' approach to death, condemning it as excessive, sentimental and overly dramatic. But I'm not sure our attitude towards it is any better. Our considered approach to death is to try very hard to ignore it. We can't even say it. We say someone has 'passed away'. We talk about having 'lost' someone, or someone being 'late'. They are neither lost nor late. We know perfectly well where they are, and they're not late, they're just not coming.
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(Ruth Hogan, The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes, 2018)