The big yellow bus with a black stripe. No, it’s not a school bus.
My biggest childhood trauma.
I was five years old when we went to papa’s uncle’s birthday in the Estonian countryside. My cousin and I explored the surroundings checking out the old farm sheds and playing football with potatoes in the field. In the meantime, adults ate country food, drank vodka and danced polka to the accordion music. Grandma loved polka, or her version of it.
Grandma(on papa’s side) got really drunk at this party, spinning around uncontrollably, like a child, knocking the dishes off the table and crashing down with her polka partner. It looked like a drunken circus act, but not in a funny way, it was quite the opposite. Plasticky smirk on her face and frantic energy bursting out of her seemed tacky and invasive in regards to other guests. It was getting late, and I was exhausted so I begged papa to go home.
Grandma didn’t want to leave. Papa managed to pull grandma out of the house with help of his uncle and sat her in the passenger’s front seat. We had to stop a couple of times because grandma was feeling sick. She even fell out of the car into the road ditch, once.
Papa was mostly quiet, eyes fixed on the road, processing something in his mind. She was talking loud but wasn’t making sense. She sounded angry and frustrated. I think it had to do with my mom or grandpa, because I heard her yelling out their names.
We reached the city two hours later, dropping off grandma first.
When we finally made it home, mom informed papa that grandpa called and complained about the obnoxious grandma. Next day we found out that grandpa died of a heart attack. The concept of death was new to me, and I was just told I couldn’t see grandpa anymore.
Due to the hassle associated with funeral arrangements, family calls and visits, among other things, my parents did not really have time to think about me and whether I should attend the funeral. So, they took me with them, and I went, like any other event, but this time I was completely clueless.
It was a cold and cloudy afternoon in the late fall of 1990. People were scattered around the front entrance of my grandparents apartment building with flowers, waiting for the funeral bus.
Papa was stressed trying to arrange things and make sure everyone had a ride to the graveyard. To have a car was considered a luxury back in the day, so coffins and people rode together but I had no idea, not yet.
The yellow bus with a black stripe had arrived late. Family and friends quickly got on the bus as we were running behind the schedule. I was playing with my older brother and cousin until papa called us and told us to quickly get on the bus.
As I got inside, I saw a coffin on the floor all the way in the back. Sudden wave of anxiety took over my body and prevented me from moving. In that instance, I knew that my grandpa was in this weird, long and scary box. All I wished was to get off the bus but the driver had already closed the doors, and waited for me to sit down so we could finally depart.
I was trying to locate my seat in a fully crowded bus but my mind and body were in distress attempting to operate in the emergency mode. My nervous system was under great stress blocking access to my brain. I could only hear a static tv noise in my ears. I couldn’t breathe. It’s as if someone stepped on my chest and cut off the oxygen.
The sight of the coffin was scaring me and scarring me, so I tried looking away from it but it didn’t help. I don’t remember if anyone helped me get to my seat or I did it bravely on my own. My body was shaking.
My grandma started crying louder once we started moving. She slid down off her seat to her knees weeping intensely over the coffin. She was talking to him as if he was alive, asking for forgiveness then yelling at him a moment later for leaving her alone.
I glanced at her for a brief moment even though I was scared shitless. I just hoped she would not open the coffin, I didn’t want to see dead grandpa. I quickly turned back to the window avoiding any chance of seeing anything of that nature. Grandparent’s home was 5 minutes away from the graveyard, but to me, it felt like eternity.
These images are forever imprinted in my memory, and to this day, there is something about coffins in limited space and my proximity to it that sparks anxiety. And now I know where this trauma comes from.
After grandpa’s death, grandma’s drinking had worsened and she suffered a brain stroke causing paralysis to the right side of her body. In 1994, when she died, I didn’t ride on the yellow bus with a black stripe, but I got nauseous in the church from candles’ smoke and almost passed out in the middle of the funeral ceremony.
Years later, I moved to the United States and attended American high school. Ironically, the yellow buses with black stripes returned to my life and on my first day of school, it brought back traumatic memories. As I boarded the school bus for the first time, I kept my gaze away from the back.
