SEALED GRAVES FINALE

Hey guys, I am sorry I didn't post on Thursday like I promised...I was uber busy with mid-terms..so once again I apologize. I am grinning stupidly as I type this, imagine my surprise when I logged in to post and what did Adia see? Two followers??? what?? I was flabbergasted!! thanks Timi and Estelle. Mwah!! Ok, so here's the finale guys, I haven't gotten any critique so far, so I hoping you guys chip in and critique away...I appreciate constructive criticism, here>>>>>>>> enjoy!!!!

SEALED GRAVES ©


I was looking at the six-foot hole in the ground, they lowered the casket into the ground and I shoved a spade in the soil and threw dirt on the coffin. Ralu stood beside me, steady as a rock, he put his arm around me and squeezed my shoulder as we both watched the priest perform the burial rites. I could smell him, sweat and cologne mingled to give a heady fragrance. I looked up at him and smiled reassuringly, I was fine. Although, death seemingly brings with it an aura of finality, this death marked a new beginning . It brought transcendence and release. This was the time, that chapter in my life I had tried to tackle for so long, never letting up had finally unraveled itself. Even though this was not closure, I was content with resolution. Oddly, I was happy; funerals are typically cheerless and dispiriting, yet I was standing looking at the coffin and I felt no sadness only a strange sense of serenity. Mama had finally gone home.
In retrospect, Mama had lived her life after Papa’s death in gravitation towards this destination. She had never gotten over Papa’s death and I am almost certain that she had pined for this day to come. I watched her degenerate until she became a living relic and I could do nothing to help her. I remember so vividly that rainy day after we had stormed out of the women’s meeting in church, it had been the incipience of her spiral downwards. As we walked home that day she had murmured constantly and at times she interjected the drone of the rain with loud exclamations like “Pity…hmm!” The weeks that followed revealed a new and unfamiliar Mama; she would cry and hit her head on the rough brick wall of her room until her shaven head was scratched sore and bleeding. She stayed in her room all day and never came out. My eight year old mind could not decipher what was happening. I was oblivious to the truth that Mama had not yet come to terms with Papa’s death and that after three months her repressions had broken loose. I slowly became a walking shadow in the house, an insignificant painting that no one remembered to dust. I remember asking Aunty Ezinne what was wrong with Mama and she answering that Mama was sad but she would soon be happy again.
That happiness never truly came, on her “happy days” Mama would cook up a storm, everything from ofe nsala to akara. Those were the days I lived for, she would look at me with her bright eyes dancing in their sockets and ask me in Igbo “Gogo, what do you want to eat, what should I cook?” beaming at me all the time. I did not need to look for the light of recognition in her eyes then; I knew she was really seeing me. However, those days were few, after her cooking sprees she would abruptly become distant and return to her room and then the wailing would begin. I recall asking Aunty Ezinne a second time what was wrong with Mama, this time she shook her head despairingly and said that Mama was sick, very sick. Consequently, Aunty Ezinne cooked my meals and took care of me while Mama lay in her room moaning and wailing or staring at the ceiling tiles seemingly lost. I slept in Aunty Ezinne’s house till I turned thirteen and then I became Mama’s mother. It was because of those “happy days” I never left Mama; I force-fed her, restrained her when she tried to inflict wounds on herself and held her as she shook violently her body racked with sobs. I stayed, because on those “happy days” our roles were reversed, I became the child once again and Mama my mother.
I watched them, arms folded across my breasts; the picture was so familiar somewhat like déjà vu. Men clad in shorts carrying head pans and cement bags walked around, some mixed mortar and others laid the mortar on the grave. I watched like an unseen observer distanced from my body, oblivious to the flies that danced around my legs; piercing and sucking. Then at sundown, it happened they sealed the grave with the headstone, beautiful words inscribed in cement alluding to Mama’s wonderful attributes. I expected to feel pain, sharp and biting but all I felt was release like a bladder full of urine that was finally assuaged. Mama was where she had longed and needed to be, laid to rest beside her husband. I stood looking at the two tombstones, lovers interred, they sat side by side like mirror images almost disappearing into one another and then I smiled.