Mirror Magazine

Mirror Magazine

'Won't you walk into my parlour?'
By Punyakante Wijenaike
I am hovering about the entrance of the funeral parlour hoping to see life-long friends and relations. But no one comes. I float back and hover over my dead body lying in an open coffin lined with white satin. Yes, I, Trixie, am dead. Last night I died on my bed at home while my son and daughter-in-law watched.

The grandchildren had cried. That was consolation to a dying woman.

But now, today, I have been thrown out of my home into this cold, cheerless, official looking funeral parlour where I have to await the arrival of my only daughter from the United States of America. She is flying home to pay her last respects. But she won't see me at home among my kith and kin and familiar surroundings. She will see me here, in a strange parlour.

Only my own spirit is keeping my body company while it awaits cremation. The parlour is nicely arranged with stiff armless chairs upholstered with black leather. A polished brass lamp burns, renewed from time to time with fresh oil and new wicks by the undertakers. They are paid good money to do this. Two dilapidated flower wreaths stand wilting near me. It will take two days for my daughter to reach me. It is a long flight. But I am well embalmed to last two days. My son and daughter-in-law cannot be expected to exhaust themselves dancing attendance on my corpse for two whole days.

Today, unlike in the good old days, there is no extended family, no kith, no friends willing to sit by the coffin of a dead woman, keeping her from feeling isolated and alone. We are born alone and we die alone. Old customs are no more. Without a dead body in the house, my daughter-in-law is free to cook their meals in the house without depending on good-hearted neighbours. And then they have been spared the constant stream of people invading the privacy of their home. Instead, straight from the mortuary into the parlour and then into the crematorium. Life turns into ashes quickly in a fast, impersonal world.

They have not put my death notice in the newspapers, nor had it announced over the radio. They would do that after I become ashes in an urn. So much more convenient. So less tiring....

Only my brother has come to see my dead body.

He gazed upon me for a long time, maybe remembering old times when we used to fight and play as children. But of late, rarely had we met. He leading his own lonely widower's life and I leading my widow's life. Why couldn't we have been closer?

Of course, son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren came to see me. Just once, no more. They will come again for the funeral, the cremation. They do not know of my presence near my own body. I cannot discard it so suddenly and coldly after it served me for 70 years. They do not know that a spirit, hurt and humiliated by the abandonment at death, could hover, inwardly weeping, needing solace.

When night falls, the door is locked. The lid is put over the body and I am completely alone in the dark.

I cannot go home and hover there as I have lost my bearings, the roads seem unfamiliar in the dark....

If I didn't have a home, I would have accepted the funeral parlour. But I had a home, I had a family with whom I lived. Why, why have they thrown me out like garbage after death?

Yes, I feel lost, lonely, abandoned. I will wait no more for my daughter from the United States of America to come and pay her last respects. Where was she when I was ill, desperate and needing her?

I move quietly towards the door. I go through it as easily as a broken-hearted spirit can. I will seek a new body, a new life.

Back to Mirror Magazine