The happy gravedigger who fell asleep in humus
"He was not especially fond of living bodies, but of the souls of those who, leaning under the black hole, they were applauded with different reactions. He had learned to read souls.
In the reckoning of the years and his fate as a gravedigger he had never complained. He had never told anyone about his inner world, on the contrary, he kept everything and wrote down his old notebook. Only Gertrude knew of his connection to the world of souls, and she herself feared them, as if they were shadows that her husband carried by appointment of the divine.
I didn't think much about it while I washed her clothes, and then, well, then I took sleeping pills. Sometimes, he suspected that if it wasn't for the doctor prescribing the chemicals, she would die of insomnia. Five milligrams was not enough because when the devil wove them, she would wake up and find him talking to himself and get goosebumps.
One day, Alfred Mynn fell ill, with two funerals scheduled and the impromptu ones coming up, Alfred, he had been told, had black lungs and not a cigarette Smoked. He stubbornly stood up, but feverishly, he staggered again on the edge of that bed. And he obeyed the injections, covering his whole body with the blankets and seemed to disappear into that dark hole. Gertrude believed that Alfred wanted to leave, and in her ignorance and fear, she also believed that some of the souls had leaned against her husband like a lifeline in a rough sea. He had always been strong and fearless. And humble. He accepted what life offered him with a smile and when the conversation went to the dead and to the joke they made of their craft, he shook his shoulders in carelessness and did not open his mouth to say anything. He just walked away. He was not antisocial, as many dared to call him, a beast of the bush who only got along with the dead. He entered other planes and, as much as he wanted to, only those who traveled and communicated with other levels of themselves would understand him. He was a provincial Scotsman who had emigrated to New Zealand and now found himself in Australia, 37 miles from Melbourne by the sea, working for more than two decades in one of the cemeteries. God knew how many bodies that earth chewed. And they, outside, counting the seasons of time that glided along the tracks, whistling. The verdant fields of smoke rings from an unstoppable factory, and in the background, framing the veil, an orange sunset, just like those that tore the sky.
Since that time, he was accompanied by beings of light who walked beside him and behind him, pushing him forward, singing, but above all, being amazed by the unexpected departure in the face of the warmth of the now. And they gained the perception that the day they dreaded would be the most astonishing and liberating, because what was given to him, Alfred, with a living spirit in a present body, everyone described to him the plasma of unconditional love, even between planes, even in previous planes.
From there, near Orkney, the plans were already interspersed, and at what speed, in the old attic of the main house.
He would raise up again to his agenda, his illness was to show him what he had refused to accept since is childhood."
Excerpt from the Chapter Two of the Book The Lamb of God Who Took Away the Sin of the World, happy gravedigger who fell asleep in humus
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