Three Wishes

Chapter Two: The Funeral

At the funeral, which was held in a big room with white walls, gray chairs and wooden floor, I met with my aunt, uncles, cousins, and friends of the family. I love my family and it’s really nice to see them, but watching them cry makes me feel terrible and I know that it is not my fault, but still it hurts me to watch other people feel sad so I sat down with my mother and decided to watch the floor until the coffin with my grandmother’s body came. It sound so horrible if you think about it, waiting until some strangers bring a dead member of your family in a box made of polished wood, but it’s a reality that I have to accept.

When my mother, her two brothers and only sister went to help bring the coffin I took out a piece of folded paper I had in my bag and unfolded it to read what was written inside, it was the poem my grandmother used to tell me, I never learned all of it but I remember the beginning and the end, my little sister Molly came and sat down next to me while my mom left and looked at the paper.

“What is that?” She asked trying to grab the paper, I slapped her hand and when I saw a little bit of surprise and hurt in her small six years old eyes I wanted to kick myself, Really Amara, now you want to make your sister cry, today of all days? Before she left I took her hand. “I’m sorry Molly I just don’t feel like myself today.” She just nodded and sat down again.

“So, what is that?” She asked again this time just looking at the paper and keeping her hands away, I moved the paper closer to her so she could see it. “It’s a poem that grandma likes… I mean liked, and she used to read it to me when I asked her to. It’s about a man that is sentenced to death and his mother tells him that she’ll try to talk the king into letting him live, so she tells him that if she convinces the king to spare his life the day of the execution she’ll wear white but if the king doesn’t spare his life she’ll wear black and so the day of the execution when the man is about to get killed he sees his mother wearing –“

I was interrupted by the sound of a the door opening and my mom and her siblings came inside, all sobbing, mi little sister ran to hug my mother and I stood frozen to my seat as everyone stood up and watched how two strangers came rolling the coffin in a cart and placed it at the front of the room and leave the room. Two things happened then. The first one was a question that popped into my head how can she fit in a coffin so small? The second one was a bunch tears coming out of my eyes and little sobs, a lot of little sobs. She was dead, this is really happening.

I tried to calm down because I hate to cry in front of people, but the little sobs kept coming so I decided to turn around and cry until I calmed down, as soon as I did I sat down and just stared at the floor, the only thing that made come back to reality was when someone came to say hi. Time seemed to run fast and in what seemed like five seconds later my mom came to say that my stepfather was taking us home and she was going with her siblings to read my grandmother’s will.

“Do you want to see her with me before you go?” she asked, I looked up at her, despite her grief she also saw mine and she noticed that I haven’t gone near the coffin and that I didn’t dare to go alone, so I nodded and taking her hand we went to see her one last time in the coffin. The walk to the coffin felt like a million years and during all that time I kept asking the same question, how can she fit in a coffin so small?

When we finale stood near the coffin I left the folded paper with the poem on top of it and taking a deep breath I looked at her. Two thoughts came to my head; the first one was the same stupid question, how can she fit in a coffin so small? And the second one was that she wasn’t my grandmother. The body inside the coffin looked exactly like her, and I’ve heard that sometimes the death bodies looked like they were sleeping, but she didn’t looked like she was sleeping because she didn’t look like my grandmother. This may be crazy but I felt like she wasn’t there, I felt that she was already somewhere else, and that this body was just the shell that she left behind.

 When I arrived home I still felt sad but I also felt a little bit better, so I decided to distract my mind from everything and just escape reality for a few hours. I took the book that I was reading today and sitting on my bed I started reading again, the secondhand embarrassment of the book character washing all over me and distracting me from my world just as I needed it to. I think I fell asleep reading, and while I slipped into the world of dreams my mom came back from reading the will of my grandmother and bringing home something that was going to give my life a huge plot twist.