The Hole Was Dark Like The Whole Of My Heart

‘I’ve done this a lot of times but I don’t like digging a hole for my friend’ he thought looking at the damp pile of earth next to him. He sat down on the hard ground and took off his gloves calculating on his fingers roughly how many times he had dug a hole so that someone’s mother, or father, or sister or brother or just someone’s friend could be put into it – and the dark earth that he had painstakingly taken out of the ground, being shovelled back in on top of the lid on top of the person. He used to write it down, but forgot a few times, and then it all got too hard to remember. Sometimes he just couldn’t remember things. But he knew that this one meant a lot to him. It was Mrs Williams. She used to teach him at Sunday school when he was a boy, that’s how old she was, the oldest person in the village. ‘Well she was’ he thought ‘but not anymore’.

Not a sound could be heard apart from the soft rustling of leaves and the tiny birds flying from one tree to another, tweeting furiously as they flew. The air was starting to feel cool now that the afternoon was getting late and the sun was playing hide and seek behind grey clouds. He put his gloves back on and stood up stretching, watching a rabbit watching a rabbit. ‘”That must be his brother or sister” he said out aloud, his child like mind relating to the story books that his mum used to read to him about Peter Rabbit and all of his brothers and sisters.

“I’ll finish that tomorrow” he said looking at the space where the solid ground and grass used to be. “It only has to be done by lunch time”. He picked up all of the tools he had been using and carried then over towards the church. As he passed by the gravestones he said to no one but the dead themselves “I dug your hole, I dug your hole”  while trying to count them at the same time but it was all too difficult so he stopped at fifteen. The garden shed at the side of the church was where the tools lived, the tin door squeaking as he opened it up with the key he took from his pocket. They all had a special place to go – he had an extremely organised mind and if he ever came into the shed and someone else had been there before him and messed up his order of things, he would just say “Oh no” and put them back in their rightful places.

Locking the shed and putting his key inside his jacket pocket Jack started off on the journey home. It wasn’t too far from the church, about fifteen minutes if a sprightly walk and perhaps thirty when dawdling. Today he was quite sprightly because he knew his mum had made his favourite dinner. Every day, walking to and from work, Jack counted the cars he saw on the road and the bicycles he saw being ridden on the footpath. As soon as he walked through his front door he would tell him Mum. “Five cars and three bikes on the way home Mum and this morning it was two cars and only one bike, but I think because it was going to rain”.

“Not many today then Jack? Did you have a good day?” She would ask and then add “You always have a good day don’t you son” smiling at her gentle giant.

They sat down at the table to eat Jack’s favourite dinner – spaghetti bolognaise. He had loved it since a little boy so his mum made it at least twice a week for him. While they were eating it was the time to discuss how everyone’s day went, finishing with ‘what was the one thing you enjoyed most about today?’

Jack’s mother said that the best part of her day was playing bingo with the elderly people at the nursing home she worked at. Jack himself felt that sitting eating his lunch under the canopy of the trees and watching rabbits running around was his highlight. 

If he had no holes to dig in the graveyard then he would tidy up inside the church and do the gardening in the grounds outside. When he first left school he tried a job in the local grocery store, but even though it was easy for him sorting shelves, having to deal with the customers, made it stressful. It was Mrs Williams who had suggested to the Reverend that as he was getting quite old and the gardens and grounds were getting a bit too much for him, perhaps they should employ Jack to do it. They already had a grave digger in those early days but one cold and windy day when Fred was digging a hole for the very large mayor of the town to fit into, he himself had a heart attack, keeled over and fell in the hole! It was a serious matter on all counts but there were a few giggles about the bizarre situation. So Jack was next in line to be the esteemed grave digger of the village.

He had been to so many funerals that he had lost count. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to go to them, especially when he didn’t know the person but he just stood behind a tree, some distance away and listened and watched. On Friday he was going to Mrs Williams’s funeral as an invited ‘guest’. He had always really liked her – she had been kind to Jack and often on the way home from school when the other kids had teased him, saying awful things, he would stop off at her house that always smelt of biscuits or cake, on the way home. She would give him afternoon tea and listen to his tales of woe. When his mother asked him one day why Mrs Williams was so special to him, he replied “She’s kind of like a Grandma, but she’s kind like a mother”.

A lot of bigger towns had machinery for digging the holes for graves but this was still a very small village and a lot of the modern traits hadn’t found their way here which left most of the people of the village feeling quite happy. They had seen what had happened to their neighbouring villages, now more like towns with traffic lights in the main street, coffee shops and cafes springing up like weeds in the sidewalk cracks and worst of all, at the end of the road, some ‘golden arches’. They knew that it would come eventually, you couldn’t stop progress, but the people of this village would try to ‘stop the growth before the growth took over’.

The next morning Thursday, Jack walked to work in the rain, a sprightly walk because the light drizzle had gradually turned to big heavy drops. He saw one car and no bike riders.

In his waterproof jacket and pants he continued to dig the hole. The rain had turned the earth to  heavy clay and it was hard work. When he needed a break from the digging he walked over to the big tree and stood under the canopy, so thick that the ground underneath it was mostly dry. From here Jack could look out onto the sad looking cemetery. He never liked it on the cold and rainy days even though he knew it made no difference to the bodies buried beneath the headstones, but somehow on a warm and sunny day, even a graveyard could look and feel much brighter. “The sooner I get this hole finished the better” he said out aloud “and then I can get into the shed to tidy up”.

As he was approaching the church the Reverend Goodman, in his long Cassock, popped his shiny bald head out of the church door and called out “Good morning Jack. Would you like to come into the church for a bit of shelter until this dreadful rain blows over?”

Jack felt very kindly towards Reverend Goodman. He treated him very well and was always ready to spend some time with him chatting but mainly listening. The Reverend heard many interesting facts that Jack came out with – and he wondered if Jack thought that a gravedigger had to know as much about the human body and the bible as possible to be good at the job!! As Jack was leaving the shelter of the big old building he was reminded by the Reverend to ‘not to forget to write something for the reading at Mrs Williams’s funeral on Friday’.

Jack hadn’t forgotten. As soon as Mrs Williams had passed away he knew in his heart that he would like to say something at her funeral. Her husband had died many years before her and as she had no children or any other living relatives Jack thought that someone should talk about her. Most of her old friends had long gone and the one or two who were left were a bit ‘hit and miss’ with their memories.

He had his ‘talk’ for the funeral in a box under his bed – his ‘special box’ as Jack called it. His treasures were put inside the box in a neat and methodical way. Once when he got out of bed in the night he accidentally kicked the box as it wasn’t pushed in far enough and before he got back into bed he tipped the contents of the box on the floor and rearranged it perfectly – it certainly couldn’t have waited until morning! In it he had his wrist bracelet from the hospital where he was born and joined with that were three others from times he had spent in hospital. One of his favourite treasures was the coin that he found one day when digging a grave. The burial site was for Mr Wilson the bank manager – Jack still believes that this was a message because coins came from a bank, even though his mum asked him if it was possible that someone just dropped a coin one day and the grass grew over it. He remembers Mr Wilson telling him one day when he went in to deposit some money from the church that ‘The Whitford bank was the bank to bank on’ which confused Jack no end!

He finished sorting out the shed and putting all the spades, hoes, rakes and every other implement for the garden on their special hooks – they went in length, shortest to longest. Jack glanced around and was satisfied with the way it looked so locked up and set off for home.

On his journey each day he passed Mrs Williams house. The garden of lavender and roses looked somehow forgotten - weeds and grasses sprouting up in between plants and behind sat a quiet and lifeless house. He recalled sitting out in the sunshine about a week before she died, the garden immaculate because Jack had mowed the lawn and weeded a few days before. They had sat at the little round table, a dainty lace table cloth falling in folds towards the ground. On the top was tea in a cornflower blue pot and one of Mrs Williams specialities of scones, cream and homemade jam. It was on this day that she had told him that the majority of her will, including her house was being left to the church but she had also allowed ‘some money’ to go to Jack because he had always held a special place in her heart. He hadn’t known what to say but blurted out in a childlike way “You’re not going to die Mrs Williams, why are you telling me this?” – He felt that it should be him giving money to Mrs Williams anyway - to repay the kindness which she had always shown him. He thought of the way he had felt emptiness inside of him as he walked home that day and he didn’t like the feeling.

Two days later he was told that Mrs Williams had been found dead in her bed, the peace she found in life etched on her face.

That night Jack had put the rose she had given to him the last time he saw her between two heavy books to press, knowing it would be put into his box to keep for always.

Night turned into morning and it was Friday. Jack came into the kitchen dressed in his one and only suit. He had bought it for his cousins wedding and even though his mother had taken down the hem of the pants once, they were still short. She offered to buy some new ones for him but these were the ones he wanted to wear- socks showing or not! His mother pointed out that they were too far up his socks but each time Jack looked down towards the hem of his pants he just said “they look ok to me! “Oh well” thought his Mum “As long as he’s happy about it”.

“Jack, did you forget what day it was? You haven’t eaten breakfast”. On his day off he always got up, came down to the kitchen and announced to his mum “Good morning Mum, it’s Friday so it’s ‘fryday’ and made his way to the frypan cupboard.

“I know but I’m not hungry today, just a cup of tea for me”.

She knew why and understood. ‘He’ll want his ‘fryday’ on Saturday this week’ she thought.

There weren’t many at the funeral – it was mainly the people from the church parish, of course including Jack and his mother. A cold wind blew but it wasn’t raining. The little birds sat still and quiet on the branches of the trees. Reverend Wilson talked about how much Mrs Williams was loved and how many lives during her life time she had blessed with her kindness and generosity. Being both a primary school teacher and a Sunday school teacher, she had guided and enriched  the lives of many children.

Jack didn’t want to cry in front of these people so to take his mind of what was being said he watched the rabbit play hide and seek with his brother.

“Jack” his mother interrupted his rabbit watching “It’s time for your words”.

He carefully took the paper from his inside pocket – it had been neatly folded into a small square, and he methodically opened it up until he had just one large piece. His mother glanced over at him, a big caring man showing his striped socks because his pants were too short and felt proud. She didn’t know how many words were written on it but she knew that whatever was on it would be from the heart.

He began in a quiet voice, a little hard to hear with the harsh wind whistling in the trees: “Mrs Williams was like the Grandma I never had. She was so kind to me and when she hugged me I could smell April violets and cinnamon cookies. She would listen to my problems and tell me that everything would work out if you worked at it. Sometimes I didn’t know what she meant but I knew she was wise so I just believed her. Mrs Williams cared for everyone and every animal. She even got this job for me but I didn’t think that one day I would be here standing next to a grave I had dug, and it would be Mrs Williams going into it. I feel very sad today. I shall miss her. She’s not here so I can’t see her, but when I’m not here I shall see her again. Goodbye Mrs Williams” and he folded the piece of paper eight times and put it into his breast pocket.