Maybe Granny Can Stay With You?
The next day of my grandmother`s funeral my dad silently gave me a piece of paper. ‘It`s all too much for me to handle. Go and pick up the grandmother,’ mumbled he.
The duty I was entitled to perform was a bit scary and overwhelming so I said ‘Uh?’
I received the instructions, coordinates and departed into the unknown.
The road to the crematorium was debilitating and thorny. Twenty minutes by foot, forty minutes by subway, thirty minutes wait for the bus, another forty minutes by bus and finally twenty minutes by foot.
The tremendous building of the crematorium towered over the columbarium fields. It could effortlessly play the cradle of evil in some horror sci-fi movie. It looked like a blend of Egypt pyramid and prison. Everything around it was grey: the trees, the skies, the clouds, the roads. Even the air was grey and tasted like ashes. Fifty and one shades of grey existence.
Steep grey stairs led me to the main entrance. Inside was the dark room full of grieving people dressed in black.
I was never a shy type, but here I got hesitant.
‘Mhm… So…Excuse me! Who is …the last one in line?’ I asked and felt like the scarlet wave of embarrassment splashed on my face and left it burning.
Never in my entire life, I felt so awkward and uncomfortable asking people about a spot in the line. In the line to pick up your dead relatives.
After another forty minutes of waiting in the stuffy basement-like room, I approached the counter and handed the piece of paper to the crematorium worker.
‘Your grandmother is not ready. Come back tomorrow!’
I gagged and retreated.
‘What does take her so long to get ready?’ wondered I on my way back home.
The next day I was natural at the crematorium. I knew the drill. And didn`t hesitate to ask one sobbing guy, ‘Honey, you don`t come here often, do you?’ I got no answer and hit myself hard on the wall of many sets of judging eyes.
When my turn came I approached the counter and looked at the enormous box on the top of it.
‘What`s that?’, I asked
‘The grandmother’, replied the crematorium worker and held out the papers to sign.
The cinerary urn looked like an overweight cousin of the Pandora box. It was tastelessly decorated and unwieldy. I struggled to fit it in my, so I thought roomy bag. And my grandmother`s final journey home has begun.
Twenty minutes by foot, thirty minutes wait for the bus, forty minutes by bus, another forty minutes by subway, and finally twenty minutes by foot.
‘Shall I buy her a ticket?’, I was thinking while entering the subway, ‘Or is it the glorious advantage of being dead? From now own, granny, you can ride for free.’
Noone in the subway train knew my horrific secret: I was carrying a dead body. Disintegrated, unrecognizable but still a dead body. I felt like Indiana Jones and the holy grail. Though I wasn`t sure that the grail I was carrying was that much holy.
I came back home and tossed out the cinerary urn on the kitchen table.
‘What`s that?’, asked my dad.
‘The grandmother!’
I sit at the table, leaned on the urn with my elbow and stared at him.
‘Mhm…’, said dad and looked away, ‘You know what? It`s all too much for me to handle. Maybe granny can stay in your room?’
I gagged and kept starring at my dad.
‘Well… It just for a couple of days till I figure out where we gonna bury her’, said he and left the kitchen.
For the next three years, grandmother and I lived together in my room.
This article is part of the series “Deadly funny” scattered across the publications. I explore the relationship with death when you first get introduced to it. It can be funny. Deadly funny.
Do you remember the first time you met Death?
Check out other stories of the series “Deadly funny”.
