Rosemary's Remembrance - A Meditation on Hamlet

At one point there were four in the house. Then there were three. And when the fourth, the father of the three, drew his last, sputtering breath, each was moved, as if by the sea, to their own bereaved contemplation. The man who died was loved by all his children: two daughters named Alquila and Cereta and a son named Saevius. 

            I have that within which passes show,

            these but the trappings and the suits of woe 

            (Hamlet 1.2.79-89).

It hit Saevius like a crack in a boat. Dread and panic filled him as cold and horrible as  water filled an ill-fated vessel. For he too was sinking. He never regretted a feeling, but this was not like any feeling he had felt before. He suddenly saw quicksand everywhere. He was shocked that he had not seen it before and nobody else could see it now. 

            Do not forever with thy vailèd lids

            Seek for thy noble father in the dust.

            Thou know’st ’tis common; all that lives must die,

            Passing through nature to eternity.

            (Hamlet 1.2.72-75)

It hit Alquila like a bottle to a ship, like a boot to the ground of a new country. Her head was the clearest when her father passed. She told Saevius to move their father’s body outside so they could bury him. He tried once when told, but could not. Their father was too heavy. Alquila tried, then Cereta, to no avail. So Alquila went outside and gathered the rosemary in their garden to cloak the smell she knew would come. “Rosemary’s for remembrance” she told her siblings, but it served more to make them forget. She knew that there was a plan to everything, that their father had died for a reason, but she did not know that reason yet. 

            O this the poison of deep grief. It springs 

            All from her father’s death, and now behold!...

            Divided from herself and her fair judgment,

            Without the which we are pictures or mere beasts

            (Hamlet 4.5.84-85, 94–95)

It hit Cereta like a string being cut. When Cereta was born, she was her father in miniature, following his whims, and hanging on each word that passed his lips. Cereta shared everything with her father, and him with her. 

So, naturally, Cereta was there when he took his last breath and before, when he had spoken his last words. And Cereta told her siblings what she heard.

“A chicken on quicksand won’t lay eggs, but a blind chicken will.”

Alquila took these words as half cipher, half divine tablet. She sat next to her father’s deathbed, puzzling the words out. But chickens and eggs could mean so many things. She even tried to read in the dust that now covered the house, thinking her father’s ghost may try to write her. 

Saevius only took one word from his father: quicksand. He could see it everywhere now, and every step he took, he felt as if he was sinking. It wouldn’t be the same if he knew what the bottom was, if he knew there was something there. His biggest fear was that there was nothing, and once he sunk he would be nothing as well. 

Cereta took no stock in the words. In fact, she had forgotten them by the time they had passed her lips. Her thoughts did not linger anywhere long anymore. She felt dumb. As if her brain had been taken out. For the first few days she just sat, unable to decide what to do. Then she smelled rosemary, so she went outside. She then remembered that she hated rosemary. She fell, tiny and alone onto a stage. The world shifted around her, but she did not know how to dance. Her father was above her, giant-like and waiting. But the strings that moved her arms lay limp beside her. And her father left her. Alone. Breathing fast and hard, she went limp. “A stringless puppet cannot swim!” She shouted. Her siblings heard, but did not listen.

The family was separate. Alquila searched everywhere for the answers she needed.  Saevius had taken to laying on his back in his room, sinking lower and lower into the sand. Cereta had gone outside. She played by the river, grasping at her reflection. She did not return for a great many days. And yet Alquila and Saevius did not notice, nor did they notice each other. Each tried to lift their father from his bed, but he still proved too heavy.

It took a great many days for each to wake from their independent dreams. The rosemary had wilted and revealed their father’s rancid stench beneath. They each emerged to look upon each other for the first time. 

“I see quicksand everywhere,” Saevius said.

“I couldn’t figure it out,” Alquila said.

“We’re all sinking”

“Even with all the clues father left me”

“Sinking, slowly toward death.”

“Maybe they would lead me to him, to his greater purpose”

“Alquila,” Saevius said, hearing his sister for the first time, “Father is dead.” And Alquila realized that she had not let herself accept that before. She knew it to be true, but her brother had her feel the truth within. When she looked in Saevius’s tearful face, she cried for the first time in several years. And Saevius embraced her, and they cried together. 

“Saevius. You said you saw quicksand. Maybe that’s what father meant. How can you live when there is only one way it can end. How can you travel when all roads lead to the same place?”

“Together.” Saevius said.

And both realized at once their sister’s cry for help, Alquila by the words, and Saevius by the emotion behind them. It was he who found her, face down in the river. Together, he and Alquila pulled the drenched body from the water and embraced it. And upon their dual embrace, water spilled from her mouth and she took a shuttering breath. Despite the wet and bitter cold, they stayed there awhile. Cereta saw herself in her sister’s eye. And more. She saw inward. She saw who Alquila was. 

They returned to their foul-smelling home. Alquila brushed away the dust which covered their table and paid it no mind. Saevius still saw the sand, but was able to walk above it, remain afloat. Cereta never told her sister that what she had reported as her father’s last words were only the turnings of her unhinged mind. And together—only together—were they able to move their father’s body, and set him adrift in the river.