It was about three feet deep and not more than one foot in diameter. To one side, there was a pile of earth that once had filled it.
The hole.
In a few hours, Sascha would lay his mother to rest in it, in a small nondescript urn that he and his brother Mike had agreed upon. While their mom was Catholic, Sascha had long ago lost all faith, if he ever had any.
Not that he wasn’t a spiritual person, but organized religion had never done him any good, quite the contrary. The service for their mom would be a religious one. He had lost that battle and didn’t really care. The minister they chose was not Catholic. The priest had refused to bury a woman who had chosen to marry a Protestant. She had in effect been a whore in the eyes of the church, having given birth to two bastards, i.e. children who had never been baptized. When she died without remorse, without receiving her last sacrament, the priest closed that final door to Catholic redemption.
Sascha knew it wouldn’t matter. He had no illusions of any afterlife where she would be beautiful again, not ravaged by the sickness that had erased life and all her memories from her, reunited with her husband, who had passed away a few years earlier.
Looking into the hole again, he couldn’t help it any longer. Tears welled up inside him, and he shivered all over. He fell to his knees and nearly tripped into the hole.
Sascha would have preferred to take the urn back to Singapore, where he lived, and spread the ashes at sea, but again, he caved in to the pressures and expectations of society, of his family. After all, his mother deserved to be laid to rest next to her husband, his aunt had said. So it was decided.
His father had passed away unexpectedly just a few days after Sascha and Dan had visited them. Doctors said his heart attack was probably due to overexertion. He had been looking after their mother for a few years, making sure she could stay at home with him, despite the Alzheimer’s. Her constant paranoia, forgetting everything, from keys to jewelry, had taken a toll on Sascha’s father. When Sascha got the call from his mom, he had been shocked. That was nearly four years ago. He had been way past it, yet kneeling here, over the hole that was to be his mother’s grave, it all came back to him, as if it were yesterday. The grief took hold of him, shook him. Tears flowed freely down his cheeks.
***
Sascha was still on his knees, in his own world, when Dan approached him from behind. “You okay? We need to get going.”
Sascha turned around, momentarily pulled from his sorrow, to see his husband standing there, looking down at him. At thirty-six, Dan was still quite a sight, tall, towering over six-foot five, lean and muscular, with a full head of blond hair that almost reached his shoulders. Just then, though, his expression was worried.
“Hon, the kids are waiting at the house, everyone is getting ready for the service, and Mike is getting anxious about starting things. You know what your brother is like.”
Dan paused mid-sentence to let the point he was trying to make sink in. “Come on, I’m right here, and I won’t leave you alone in this.”
With his last words, he approached Sascha and helped him get up from the ground. Dan pulled him close to him, put an arm around his waist, and started to lead him to the exit of the cemetery. Sascha leaned against his husband, taking strength from him, knowing that he would get through this day, despite Mike, despite their waiting family. He had to be strong, and he couldn’t let his kids down. Not on a day like this.
* * * * *