Reino’s funeral was held on a weekday, the same week that the temperature finally fell below freezing and the continuous rain changed to snow. The snow had been falling around the clock for three days and traffic was a mess. City workers were in a hurry to clear a route for the cars, so they were dumping the snow on the pavements and courtyards. With Zimmer frames and wheelchairs it was impossible to travel even a couple of metres.
So the residents of Sunset Grove hired two vans, designed especially for elderly passengers, with the Ambassador’s taxi coupons. Anna-Liisa, Siiri and the Ambassador took one and in the other were the Partanens and the Hat Lady, who had recovered from her cardiac infarction and started going from door to door in the retirement home. Siiri and Anna-Liisa assumed she was going begging, hoping for some coffee and sweet rolls, but she claimed she was on Jesus’s business. And when she came to visit, it didn’t take her long, in fact, to fish out a Bible and start grilling her host on personal matters.
‘I haven’t yet come to a decision,’ Siiri had told her, trying to be tactful, but that was a mistake. The Hat Lady had been giving her the full treatment ever since, thinking she was easy pickings. She’d got to be quite a nuisance, and Siiri took care to make sure they didn’t travel in the same van.
There was no car access to the front door of the crematorium. The vans had to drop them off along the street and the drivers offered no help with the slog to the entrance; they just dumped the chairs and Zimmer frames in the wet snow and sped off. The old people took so long getting to the door, nudging each other along through the snowdrifts, that they were late for the ceremony. Clumps of snow stuck to the wheels of their chairs and Zimmer frames and made them nearly impossible to push. The Ambassador’s cane got stuck in the handle of Anna-Liisa’s Zimmer frame, the Hat Lady fell into a mound of snow, hat and all, and Margit Partanen looked like she was going to have a heart attack.
‘It’s all right, we’ll all end up at the crematorium eventually!’ the Ambassador shouted gamely.
Finally, the chapel verger, a frail-looking woman with no coat on, hurried over to help them. By the time she ‘d hoisted all the wheelchairs, Zimmer frames and old people inside she was soaked with sweat. They crammed themselves into the small foyer to take off their coats and hats and unwrap the flowers they’d brought. There was no bin for the wrappers – there never seemed to be, in any church or chapel. Anna-Liisa left her Zimmer frame by the coat rack, thinking it would only be in the way and that since it was red it wasn’t suitable for the occasion.
The old crematorium was a gloomy place, small but echoey and unadorned. The door at the other end of the hall was particularly ghastly, because it led to the oven. Siiri had never liked the way they slid the coffin on rails into the oven and left the pall bearers standing there watching it go. She always imagined the rising flames and pain of purgatory, although Anna-Liisa said that the body was burnt with heat alone, without any flames, and it all happened automatically at the press of a button, like making coffee. Siiri thought the funerals at the Hietaniemi chapel were better. The building there was designed by Theodor Höijer, and was unusually beautiful. She didn’t know who was responsible for the dismal design of this crematorium.
There was hardly anyone else at Reino’s funeral besides them. The residents of Sunset Grove sat on the left in the fourth and fifth rows, not wanting to be too close to the coffin as it rolled along its final track. On the other side of the aisle there were just two men, relatives of the deceased, whom they had never seen before.
‘We’re his nephews,’ one of the men said, nodding politely.
‘Ah. Here to get your inheritance,’ the Ambassador said, somewhat inappropriately, but the two men smiled.
‘Uncle Jaakko didn’t really leave anything. Everything he owned was spent on the retirement home.’
‘Are we at Jaakko’s funeral?’ asked Eino Partanen, who wasn’t even wearing a dark suit, just tracksuit bottoms and a pullover.
‘But it was good that he was there at the retirement home. We didn’t have to worry about him.’
‘This is Reino’s funeral. Would you be quiet?’ Margit Partanen hissed at her husband, wishing there was a mute button on his wheelchair.
The funeral was an unusually bad one. They almost felt sorry for Reino. The pastor kept his speech short, however, and the nephews didn’t start reciting poetry next to the coffin, but the Hat Lady fell asleep in the middle of the ceremony, and it took them quite a long time to get the wheelchairs to the coffin. Since Reino had always been the one to say a few words about the deceased, there was a little moment of uncertainty over what to do once they were all next to the coffin.
‘To the memory of a card partner and a good fellow,’ the Ambassador said finally, or rather mumbled, which annoyed Anna-Liisa.
‘Whose bedfellow? Jaakko’s?’ Eino Partanen shouted to his wife as they went back to their seats, but just then the organ started up a hymn, so they were spared from explaining it to him. No one sang, since Irma wasn’t with them, and, once again, Siiri felt unsettled. Irma would have so enjoyed this outing if she weren’t lying in the closed unit, tied to her bed, with no idea that anything fun was happening.
A deadly dull memorial reception was held in Restaurant Perho on Mechelininkatu. The service was always slow there because it was staffed by students from the restaurant school. On one visit, Siiri hadn’t got the salt she’d asked for until the bill came, and this time they waited twenty minutes for their coffee.
The nephews were snow dumpers by trade, making their living by shovelling snow off rooftops and dropping it on people’s heads. They were very quiet men, but Irma would have managed to show enthusiasm even for them. She might have asked them something funny about what snow dumpers do in the summer. Now Anna-Liisa was assiduously taking the reins.
‘When there’s this much snow, you can’t get anywhere with a Zimmer frame. We’ve had quite enough snow in our lives, we don’t need any more.’
A snow discussion of sorts ensued, but Siiri didn’t participate. She looked out of the window and tried to wash away the gloom with weak coffee. They didn’t even serve cake, these stingy nephews of his. The elderly group took the tram home, since no one had a mobile phone and their attempts to have the restaurant staff order a van for the disabled didn’t quite work out.
When she got back to Sunset Grove, it dawned on Siiri that their friend had been known as Reino and yet the nephews had kept talking about their Uncle Jaakko. It was quite possible that they’d gone to the wrong funeral!
‘Döden, döden, döden,’ she said to herself and laughed out loud until she gave herself a stomach cramp.