Old Oslo

Lee Wright

The cemetery, in the district of Old Oslo, is an urban green space of respect. The church, located next to the cemetery, with its timeworn walls and ancient roof, belongs to Oslo hospital. It closed its doors in 2014. Rough grass grows above the bones. The breeze was a gentle kiss. At the entrance, I stepped over broken glass. I was there to visit my brother.

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DALE FREDERICK
WRIGHT
b. 23-11-1961 d. 27-5-2006
MUCH LOVED ALWAYS MISSED

He had died at the age of forty-four. And so I had waited until my forty-fourth birthday to visit. He turned nineteen the year I was born and moved out a few months later. I sat down, the ground was softer than it at first seemed. My mind shut out the clutter and voices from the street. I looked at the tired flowers and said, ‘All right, let’s get down to it.’

I had hesitated about making the journey at all. The morning before I was due to leave for Norway, walking to my job at the university, I saw a homeless man – late fifties, undernourished, long beard. Between his knees an almost empty bottle of vodka, spilt tobacco and cigarette wrappers. He asked for some change, and I said I couldn’t help. Human kindness breaks down in the city. I often forget Dale spent time on the streets.

In one of the few photographs I owned, Dale, not then twenty, is sat on the floor at Dad’s feet. His hair is in dreadlocks – cascading vines. In his hand, a glass of beer. In his mouth, a cigarette. A measurement of the man he was to become. I took the photograph from my backpack. His shoulders are raised, his body rigid, like a praying mantis.

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My thoughts returned to Heaven and Hell. Also in my backpack, a second-hand edition of William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. What exactly would Hell be? I imagined walking down a staircase, at the bottom being engulfed in flames. Blake had not unlocked the door of Hell for me. The 9/11 attacks did it better. The hijacked planes and people leaping from the burning towers. Only to be made into a disaster movie starring Nicolas Cage.

Dale put his body through hell. The cocaine caused his blood vessels to contract. The heroin wounded his lips, his mouth, his lungs. I clearly recall the night he stole from our house. Dad had granted his troubled son a place to stay. By a quarter past six in the morning, my brother, and anything of value had gone. The busy bee has no time for sorrow, wrote Blake.
 

‘Does anyone come to visit you?’ I asked.
 

In the grass, lay a dead honeybee. I’d read about Oslo’s Bee Highway. At another plot, a lady in pink shoes tended to a headstone, cleaning it down with a bottle of water and a small brush. I propped up Dale’s photograph against the grave and looked again at the dead honeybee.

Lee Wright was born in Warwickshire and has an MA in Creative Writing. He is currently working towards a PhD researching memoir and film. His work has been published with Fairlight Books, époque press and Burning House Press amongst others.