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PoetryIn-e-Motion

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Poems and short stories ©   by Arno and Anna unless differently stated (Disclaimer).

I still remember my great grandmother, the mother of my maternal grandfather. She was said to be a strict lady, and that's how I remember her, sitting on a bench in my great aunt's kitchen, a shawl draped around her face.

She died of pancreatic cancer when I was four. My mother took me to a picture of her, and told me that great granma was dead. To me it was immediate acception, she was dead and that's it. I was told what she died of, but I could not yet imagine the work, pain, and desperation that goes along with cancer, hand in hand. For me death was something that came suddenly, like sleep.

At the funeral everyone was sad and so serious. We sang a beautiful summer psalm, and as we sang, I looked out of the window. The sun was shining, and it was as if the summer we sang about was outside, while we were inside in a dark, dusty church, next to death. The only way summer got in was through rays of light, reflected by all the dust in the air.

My great aunt was the most serious of all faces I saw. She wore a black hat with a short veil over her eyes, and the way she looked made me almost scared of her.

This funeral was my first, and only one for many ears. In school I became more familiar with the psalm as a song sung on the last day before summer holidays. For most people it is a moment awaited and enjoyed. For me, it will always remain a moment of death and sorrow.