I DIDN’T RECOGNIZE THE FACE inside of the coffin. Its military haircut and its moustache were both combed smooth. I remembered them bushy and bristling, itching as those lips—now pale and purple—reached down for a kiss. Its eyes were closed, but in my memories they were blue.
I had always been afraid of my great-grandfather, but never more so than at his funeral. He inspired a sombre atmosphere in the people around him—an atmosphere that lingered, even in death.
Everyone wore black. Even me. Even the body in its varnished wooden box.
All around me people talked quietly. Many cried. My father’s eyes remained dry, and when I asked him why, he said that he’d already killed that old man in his books.
I don’t think he meant for me to hear that. I don’t think he remembered I was there.
The colourful bouquets piled upon tables and trestles all around the room seemed heretical against the gloomy attire of those who put them there.
Only my Grandmother matched the flowers: jade earrings still pinned to her ears, her dress a navy blue. I watched her as she spotted me, standing in my father’s shadow. She marched across the room and spirited me away.
“Come,” she said, her voice louder and happier than any of those around us. “Let’s go visit the only man I ever admired.”
My Grandmother did cry as she looked down at the man in the coffin. Yet she was smiling too.
“Do you know,” she said. “That I think I was spoiled? Oh, I had more chores crammed into one day than you’ve had to do your whole life, but my father had more sons than he knew what to do with—and only one baby girl.”
I looked around for a baby girl, but my Grandmother laughed and said, “Me!” She jabbed a thumb back at her collarbone. “I had more dresses than any other girl in my grade, and even I knew that I looked damn cute with my hair tied back in ribbons. My daddy bought me those pretty things because he didn’t know how to say, ‘I love you.’”
She wiped her wrinkled eyes and said quietly, “He was the most vibrant man alive.”
I looked at the man in the box. His wrinkles were smoother than I had ever seen. His nails were neatly trimmed. His hands were folded on his stomach. But he looked waxen and unreal, and I couldn’t imagine this figure ever being vibrant.
The coroners hadn’t been able to erase the yellow that had crept into his skin, nor how much flesh the cancer had leeched from him. I had trouble resolving the man in the box with the man who’d sat in his rocking chair, creaking slowly away, terrifying me into silent respect without ever saying a word.
“I don’t remember him talking,” I confided to my Grandmother, wondering if it was a failing on my part not to remember somebody’s last words.
“He’d like that,” she said. “I mean, he didn’t speak much English. But even so, he thought actions spoke louder.”
Everyone had looked into the coffin, but no one stared into it as long as my Grandmother. Nobody else smiled. Later, over cookies and punch, I pointed this out to my Grandmother, and she laughed softly behind her cup.
“Most people don’t smile when bad things happen,” she said. “But I remember a little rhyme that surely your daddy’s taught to you. ‘Now I lay me down to sleep....’”
She cried as she said the Lord’s Prayer. I repeated the words with her until she trailed into silence.