White Linen ​

White Linen His body was wrapped in linen. We didn’t have a single sheet large enough to wrap him, but four linen pieces worked together to hide his-empty-shell body. I imagine what he would say to that, being buried without pomp, circumstance or coffin. He’d pretend it doesn’t matter and he never wanted it anyway. He’d make macabre jokes, hold intellectual high ground, subtly mock those who felt a burial requires anything more than death and a large hole in the ground. He’d blame me for the impoverished circumstances, encourage a well-stocked bar for the after party, chat glibly about mixed drinks.

He liked words, good words, and those should be said over his body. I stared into the ground, the human shaped shroud, quietly awaiting my wisdom. If there were living eyes on me, I didn’t look up to meet them. I’m sure my own family gazed downward as well. The children had long lost interest in these proceedings, their game of cemetery hide and seek bounced around and between the mourners. A brief image flickered over my eyes: the horror of a running child falling into the six-foot chasm, fall blunted by the bloated, dead body of her grandfather. I wondered if the body would squish or feel hard under the child, and how we’d pull her out. I forced my mind away from such meanderings, cleared my throat, and opened the tattered book in my hand.

“There are at least two kinds of games, one could be called finite and the other infinite.”*

• From James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games, 1986