REFLECTIVE ESSAY - Creative Writing
The usual small talk filled the hall as I slumped my bag at the bottom of the stairs. Still nodding in agreement to whatever mum was saying, I shuffled through envelopes, searching for my name.
"Your Aunt Livy is dead"
"What?"
I thought I'd heard wrongly, but no. Looking back maybe the way it was casually dropped into conversation was more of a sign of her insignificance than I realised at the time. "Aunt Livy" my Granny's sister, a spinster, one of those relatives you see once a year at Christmas. I didn't know how to react, it was a bit of a shock although she was eighty-six. I didn't know the correct response, not knowing her well enough to be upset, yet there was a strange feeling of loss.
The next few days were an upheaval. As she had never married, she had no direct family of her own, her closest relatives being our family and my uncle's. So my mum's days turned into that of lawyer's meetings, funeral discussions and tidying a house, picking it to pieces for the belongings to be divided up. Although not on my mother's side of the family, the negotiations fell to her as she has the most level head for business.
As our dining room began to fill with familiar smelling relics from her house, I pawed through them, trying to cling to the vague memories of her. I knew she had been a primary school teacher, as when I was little, I can remember her visits being dominated by lectures on posture and elocution lessons. Or when we visited her, my desperate attempts to act like a "lady" as I tried to delicately sip my tea. She had always been so strict and unbelievably clean.
I tried as best I could to stay out of any arrangements. ...
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As our dining room began to fill with familiar smelling relics from her house, I pawed through them, trying to cling to the vague memories of her. I knew she had been a primary school teacher, as when I was little, I can remember her visits being dominated by lectures on posture and elocution lessons. Or when we visited her, my desperate attempts to act like a "lady" as I tried to delicately sip my tea. She had always been so strict and unbelievably clean.
I tried as best I could to stay out of any arrangements. I knew I would be going to the funeral, but I wanted to leave it at that.
My name was called, I was being summoned to the dining room. As I stepped through the door the two smells that defined "oldness" mingled and became overpowering.
"Your granny wants to go through the photos with you, show you where some of your history lies."
So, with a sigh, I went and knelt beside the hunched old woman with a lap full of dusty and faded pictures.
"Look familiar?"
She produced a framed image of a red-cheeked baby.
"Is that me?"
"Yes, it was taken from her bedside table."
The thought of me meaning something to her touched a nerve somewhere.
"Oh yes, you're the youngest of the brood, she had high hopes for you, said you'd go far."
I stooped my head embarrassed, and shuffled through some photos on the floor.
"Who is this?"
I was holding a picture of a stunning woman on the arm of a man in a suit.
"That's Livy."
"And the man?"
"That was her fiancé, Tam. That was taken a month before the wedding date."
"But... she was never married?"
"He died a week after the photo, cancer they said. Nothing they could do for you in they days. Found out what was wrong once your corpse was on their table"
I felt even stranger than I had before. I spent the remainder of the afternoon unfolding pieces of my Great Aunt's life, every keepsake filling another gap in the puzzle. She had been to Canada, spent a few months as a wandering spirit. Embroidered hankies that pupils must have given to a much-loved teacher, my Aunt.
When that day drew to a close, I felt strangely close to her. I cried before I slept, then wondered, had anyone else really cried for her death?
Having never been to a funeral before, I didn't know what to expect, I clung to my sister for guidance. The funeral was awful. The minister talked through a microphone, his monotonous voice boomed impersonal bible passages as we sat motionless in the brightly lit church. I can't help but wonder, what did that scene have to do with the life my Aunt had led, would she have approved if she had been able to see it? I looked around at the few people, mostly family, who were gathered. No one cried, everyone solemn, but no one moved to tears. I cried, yet I still don't know why, maybe just because no one else had.
We all huddled around the graveside as the coffin which held her small corpse was lowered into the entity that was her grave. A gravestone told us she was to rest beside her mother, father and infant brother. The rain drizzled and the minister droned again. I thought of her fiancé, had he been alive, would he have broken down at this sight? How would her life be now if he had lived? Would we have been replaced with a family close enough to cry? Where were her friends? How would the children she had taught react to this?
The surreality of the day continued, we sat down for a meal and made uncomfortable conversations with relatives we barely knew existed. People began to smile. The strangeness of the day heightened by my granny having a nosebleed.
Looking back to that time I can see just how big an effect it had on me, everyone isn't going to be here forever, and taking people at face value doesn't always work. I wish I had gotten to know her before she left us.
