Behind stage - what happened between Auschwitz, Poland and my 23rd birthday - in 2 weeks time
I’ve climbed the stairs and then stopped at the door listening at the voices inside the house… I lighted a candle in the support near the door, outside, while listening, breathless, to the voice of the priest inside the house hallway … I didn’t new if I should entered or not.. ..Would I disturb the ceremony by entering?… I was imaging that the priest and all the rest were staying in the door, inside, and if I would have opened it I would have hit them…
Finally I open the door of the hallway and slowly I entered the house… the priest was at the other end of the hallway, near the head of my grandma …the rest of the people – not too many, we didn’t want at all a large ceremony, were along the sides of the coffin…I entered and I stopped in the door.. my aunt, my mothers’ older sister, gave me a lighted candle to hold in my hands while listening to the priest…
I was looking at my grandma that was lying in the coffin… the coffin was covered inside with white linen which had beautiful laced edges that were coming out the coffin …..at the corners of the coffin there were candles that were burning silently…. She was looking really calm like sleeping.. I had the impression all through the ceremony that she is really sleeping…. that I was expecting any moment to see her chest move in the rhythm of breathing… Are we doing a mistake? Is she still living??? … but then why would she had stayed in the hallway on the table, in the coffin for 2 nights?
The hallway is a big room, with a large bookcase on one side and a large wardrobe on the other side. The coffin was placed in the middle of the room on the table that usually stays in the dinner room. It smelled like burning incense, pine or mirth from Greece.
The atmosphere, though really silent, didn’t seemed heavy, people were looking pretty calm and serene.... they might have thinking that they will also be like that one day…. or they might have thought how long my grandma lived – 92 years old…
The ceremony was long and boring.... it was nice but it didn’t really touch me and it seemed that nor are others – obviously they were thinking to other things…
Finally it ended and we had each to pass and present our tribute to my grandma… we had to make a cross and kiss her hand…. It seemed all natural…. As advanced creatures on the stairs of evolution we present our honors and we respect our deaths…..
I went straight ahead and stretched my head and kiss her hand, but in that instant, when closing my lips to her hand, my nose felt the smell of decaying…. a sweet smell that undoubtedly, everyone will realize what it is, though not necessarily they know what cause it…
In 2 nights my grandma, who all her life was a fighter started to decay….her body, already shrunken by 92 years of life was starting to decompose…92 years – she died very soon after her 92nd birthday – which was on November 13th 1913.
After the ceremony was ready we raised the coffin on our shoulders to carry it down the stairs to the car, the coffin though was looking massive was unexpected heavy…really heavy… I’ve thought my grandma had suddenly become heavier than she was in her last years…for this I guess the lid of the coffin was first carried to the car, before the coffin itself.
The stairs of my house are steep and in spiral just like the stairs of an 150 years old house from the historic center of town…There was not too much space for the coffin - it was too long… we had to be struggle quite a lot…at some point my grandma started to slide in the coffin… someone upstairs had said: “Look she is sliding…” half amazement, have worried… then I looked above the coffin, because until then I was under it carrying it on my shoulders, and again I had felt the smell…I couldn’t stop thinking that it is horrible… I turned my head and tried not to smell anymore…
We finally arrived downstairs… on the long hallway out of the building I asked my older cousin if we shouldn’t cover her face…He said he doesn’t know… I thought that anyway it doesn’t matter if we should or shouldn’t…. to leave her face for everyone to see was too much….she should have her respect…..and people who would see a coffin in the street, open and the face of the person inside will never have the respect for that person…. just like you would see a dead dog in the street.. .. I covered her face with the linen.
I have to write here that on the hallway out of the building I was thinking that is really disrespectful to leave the content of the coffin visible… It was like a sacrilege to death itself… and this is because people look inside and once they touched with their eyes things are becoming for them demystified and superficial – ready to laugh at or present disrespect for. Just like when we are watching inside a galaxy and we can see all the processes that are taking place there, though until then we only imagined or not even imagined what it is there inside.
I whished the lid was in place, to cover the white linen and my grandma, and not in car.
When we left the street, in the car, we could see that the sun started to shine – that means that my grandma was happy for passing this life.
At the cemetery the same cloudy and dull weather was back. It was cold and wet, it was muddy…We stop the car and we putted the coffin on a chariot… we went to the grave and laid the coffin down on the bottom… the earth was shoveled back in the grave…and we all went back….
Was she still alive??, i was wondering on the way home, and several days after and even now sometimes…..why have we buried her in that ugly, cold and muddy cemetery?
Is this the place were we all going to end? Is this how we all going to end?
I don’t want that.
Finally I open the door of the hallway and slowly I entered the house… the priest was at the other end of the hallway, near the head of my grandma …the rest of the people – not too many, we didn’t want at all a large ceremony, were along the sides of the coffin…I entered and I stopped in the door.. my aunt, my mothers’ older sister, gave me a lighted candle to hold in my hands while listening to the priest…
I was looking at my grandma that was lying in the coffin… the coffin was covered inside with white linen which had beautiful laced edges that were coming out the coffin …..at the corners of the coffin there were candles that were burning silently…. She was looking really calm like sleeping.. I had the impression all through the ceremony that she is really sleeping…. that I was expecting any moment to see her chest move in the rhythm of breathing… Are we doing a mistake? Is she still living??? … but then why would she had stayed in the hallway on the table, in the coffin for 2 nights?
The hallway is a big room, with a large bookcase on one side and a large wardrobe on the other side. The coffin was placed in the middle of the room on the table that usually stays in the dinner room. It smelled like burning incense, pine or mirth from Greece.
The atmosphere, though really silent, didn’t seemed heavy, people were looking pretty calm and serene.... they might have thinking that they will also be like that one day…. or they might have thought how long my grandma lived – 92 years old…
The ceremony was long and boring.... it was nice but it didn’t really touch me and it seemed that nor are others – obviously they were thinking to other things…
Finally it ended and we had each to pass and present our tribute to my grandma… we had to make a cross and kiss her hand…. It seemed all natural…. As advanced creatures on the stairs of evolution we present our honors and we respect our deaths…..
I went straight ahead and stretched my head and kiss her hand, but in that instant, when closing my lips to her hand, my nose felt the smell of decaying…. a sweet smell that undoubtedly, everyone will realize what it is, though not necessarily they know what cause it…
In 2 nights my grandma, who all her life was a fighter started to decay….her body, already shrunken by 92 years of life was starting to decompose…92 years – she died very soon after her 92nd birthday – which was on November 13th 1913.
After the ceremony was ready we raised the coffin on our shoulders to carry it down the stairs to the car, the coffin though was looking massive was unexpected heavy…really heavy… I’ve thought my grandma had suddenly become heavier than she was in her last years…for this I guess the lid of the coffin was first carried to the car, before the coffin itself.
The stairs of my house are steep and in spiral just like the stairs of an 150 years old house from the historic center of town…There was not too much space for the coffin - it was too long… we had to be struggle quite a lot…at some point my grandma started to slide in the coffin… someone upstairs had said: “Look she is sliding…” half amazement, have worried… then I looked above the coffin, because until then I was under it carrying it on my shoulders, and again I had felt the smell…I couldn’t stop thinking that it is horrible… I turned my head and tried not to smell anymore…
We finally arrived downstairs… on the long hallway out of the building I asked my older cousin if we shouldn’t cover her face…He said he doesn’t know… I thought that anyway it doesn’t matter if we should or shouldn’t…. to leave her face for everyone to see was too much….she should have her respect…..and people who would see a coffin in the street, open and the face of the person inside will never have the respect for that person…. just like you would see a dead dog in the street.. .. I covered her face with the linen.
I have to write here that on the hallway out of the building I was thinking that is really disrespectful to leave the content of the coffin visible… It was like a sacrilege to death itself… and this is because people look inside and once they touched with their eyes things are becoming for them demystified and superficial – ready to laugh at or present disrespect for. Just like when we are watching inside a galaxy and we can see all the processes that are taking place there, though until then we only imagined or not even imagined what it is there inside.
I whished the lid was in place, to cover the white linen and my grandma, and not in car.
When we left the street, in the car, we could see that the sun started to shine – that means that my grandma was happy for passing this life.
At the cemetery the same cloudy and dull weather was back. It was cold and wet, it was muddy…We stop the car and we putted the coffin on a chariot… we went to the grave and laid the coffin down on the bottom… the earth was shoveled back in the grave…and we all went back….
Was she still alive??, i was wondering on the way home, and several days after and even now sometimes…..why have we buried her in that ugly, cold and muddy cemetery?
Is this the place were we all going to end? Is this how we all going to end?
I don’t want that.
posted by aalto at 3:42 AM
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