I would have gone to the funeral if it had not rained. In our town, when the summer showers come, the world grinds to a halt. Empty plots in the graveyard fill with the sky’s frustration, dirt rising and spilling onto the cracked sidewalks. It was one of these days when they held Her funeral. At the service, some distant relative wearing stilettos caught her heel in the mud. It sank into the hole in the ground and the woman was forced to hobble home on uneven legs. The casket was eventually placed over the shoe and a Manolo Blahnik is now six feet under. Or so the story goes. How appropriate that Her days should end in a fable.
All throughout Her life She told me wondrous tales of the world after death. That’s what happens when it’s set in stone – when everyone knows that it’s coming. If She’s right, She’ll disappear, but not the way most people believe. Under Her coffin lid She’ll wake (as everyone is given a second chance), but the lock on the box cannot be undone by the arms of a child.
When She falls asleep that final time, Her soul will ascend from the ground, floating away from the body that doomed Her to such an early departure. A misinformed boy with pudgy cheeks and smashed glasses will be looking for an eclipse that night, one that will never come. He’ll peer through a pinhole camera and there he’ll spot the rising shape of Her shameless naked form, dancing amidst gravestones on Her trip to the stars. Or so She claims.
On the “other side” awaits the Pearly Gates, judgement’s door to Heaven. This is part of the story that She is unsure of; whether they will open and embrace Her with love, or cast Her below to Hell. But I know that the gates will swing wide and envelope Her in that wet, sticky, infinite divinity. It will seep between Her toes and rush through Her hair like gritty sand, each grain clinging to Her scalp. No amount of showering can ever rid you of the Happiness of Heaven.
The Pearly Gates, She says, are made from the finest jewels an oyster can provide. Twenty feet by twenty feet of glimmering hope, and each smooth drop reflects every one of Her perfections for the waiting line to see. Somewhere, up there in Heaven, is a pool filled with oysters whose tiny bodies were wretched open in kamikaze to create the barrier to The Better Place. Those snivelling, slimy masses shiver in glee, each shake rattling the walls off their shells. They sit there, happy as clams (though they hate the phrase). There are no clams in The Better Place. The oysters remain the sole crustations in Heaven. If not for their sacrifice, it would be clean.
Every so often they find that the pearl of an oyster is not fit to place on the Pearly Gates. It’s cast down to the mortal world, where it ends up in cheap necklaces to make the middle class look fancy. That is why She always wore a string of them. It was one such pearl that was fixed to a gold chain that sat, some thirty years ago, on the dresser of a nurse living on Bleaker Street. She had spent the morning washing light fixtures, but a sudden call to the hospital left one lying alone on the kitchen counter. Her daughter arrived home from a neighbourhood birthday party, her Sunday dress spattered with mud and the shine gone from her patent leather shoes. In her hand she clutched a clear plastic bag containing a frantic goldfish. A life given as a prize.
The child spotted the glass dome and stood on tiptoe to shove it under a running tap. The water sloshed onto the linoleum floor and left dark patches on her clothes. She snapped the rubber band off the flimsy bag, dumping the creature into its new home. The naive Pet hungrily swam to the surface to nibble at the dust that floated above him. That would be his meal for the next two months. For such a fish, death came easily. The day it finally occurred all he could think was, “Huh! I’ve never had my stomach in the air before.” The fish, you see, was an optimist.
But here we are in present day and he waits in his makeshift bowl. Every so often, up there in Heaven, the fish will get bored. Struggling against the life he led, he’ll try to flip over to see what lies around him. The cruel clique of oysters watch his plight, their cases clacking together in a symphony of heartless laughs. Their tiny feet stretch out from their shells with a shrieking, stretching sound and in unison they topple the fishbowl on end. The tumbling creature lays right-side-up, trapped in his snow-globe-world. Water drains through the sieve of clouds.
It’s on these days, when the fish gets bored, that the sky fills with rain. It’s days like these when the graveyard fills with the sky’s frustration and dirt pours onto the sidewalks. And it was one of these days when they held Her funeral. It was one of these days that I never went to say goodbye, the way She never did for me.