:: Cinders ::

The furnace sat like a patient monster, a vision of brick-and-mortar ugliness, in the middle of the crematorium.

I would set its belly on fire with my stack of offerings; I would burn up all my 'hell money', and the greens and reds and golds would rustle into black ash as flames from my gas lighter hiss to life.

I would burn up my 'hell money'―and I would discard all logic and trust in the strange spiritual concept that the cinders will become discarnate, and they'll somehow transform into money for my grandfather in the next world. To buy another pack of fags, maybe. I thought wryly―ah, there it was, the winded sense of loss.

I talked to him as the pyre grew from a flint to a small inferno. I told him about Europe―and how sorry I am for missing his death anniversary. I told him about my father's grief and my mother's plight. I asked that my family will always keep his humour. I laughed a little, inwardly, at my awkward public sentiment. I teared a little as well, when I ripped open the lid of a can of beer, the way I did when he was alive. I poured him half―on the floor―and I drank the rest in a silent toast.

There is peace in my sadness.

The rain raged, as did my fever.

But nothing was going stop me from spending a Sunday afternoon with my grandfather, even if he is all but spirit ash.

***

11.16 p.m: I made my mother laugh. I couldn't hear it, really―she's lost her voice to the flu bug―but she hid her face in her hands like a child, and her eyes shone behind her reading glasses.

She cut me an apple. I made her toast. We took each other's temperature, and then we sat together in tender unison as I churned out yet another report for her, and she ploughed through yet another class of unmarked worksheets.

***

I had a good Sunday.