Date with Death
By
D.X. Lewis
The crematorium is busy, the car park full. Pall-bearers carry lavish wreaths and “floral tributes” to the chapel. Someone important will soon go up in smoke. But I am not here to attend a VIP funeral. I am here to mark the 20th anniversary of my mother's sudden death, by visiting the spot where her ashes are scattered.
Grandpa, my mother's dad, died during my last year at university. I did not attend the funeral: Gran told me to focus on my Finals. Five years later Gran herself faded out in an old people's home. I was here for that. And then Mum died very fast of acute leukemia before I could make it home. I remember kissing her cold face in the hospital morgue, the blank faces of relatives at the crematorium six days later, and the desolation of watching the curtain close on her coffin in the chapel.
The shadows on this cold clear All Saints Day are already long. I walk through the “Garden of Rest”, past the building with the list of tariffs for the various services on offer. Past the café, Sally’s Solace, where waiting undertakers are drinking tea at formica tables or smoking on the terrace.
I reach the back of the garden. Small flower-beds in the darkening shade. Dark green foliage behind. Discreet, modest, away from the limelight. Just like my mother and her parents. Not like whoever is being incinerated this afternoon.
Both Grandpa and Mum were keen gardeners, so I am pleased their remains are now literally pushing up roses — small white blooms still resisting the cool of late autumn. And then clumps of lavender exuding a scent I associate with Gran and the fusty musty house she kept.
Disturbed by traffic noise from the road behind the fence, I walk to what looks like a miniature chapel in the middle of the garden. Inside is a computer terminal at which visitors may enter the name of anyone they wish to remember.
I type in the names of my grandfather, grandmother and mother in turn. Each time, the screen lights up with a golden book and gothic lettering like the start of a Disney film. Digital pages flutter to entries listing their dates of birth, death and cremation.
I feel a rush of cold. The late afternoon light turns suddenly to dusk. I shudder. My hairs stand on end. An intense smell of roses and lavender fills the room. I sense my grandparents behind me and my mother to my right.
"I came to say goodbye," says my mother’s voice, as if on a bad phone connection. "But why don't you join us?"
A large figure in a cloak looms up behind me. The room is now almost pitch black. “Yes, why don’t you?” he croaks, wielding a scythe.
The digital pages flutter again to display my own name. As I fall, I glimpse the date of death: 31 October 2024.
A recovering journalist and former writer on AIDS for WHO, D. X. Lewis now devotes himself to other forms of fiction -- from novels and works for the stage to increasingly short fiction. His short stories, flashes and micros have been published by Story Nook, Writers’ Forum, Flash Fiction, 101words, Splonk, Planet Paragraph, Fairfield Scribes, National Flash Fiction Day, and in Bath, Fish and Oxford anthologies. The first chapters of Made in Hungary, an unpublished novel, were published as Crossing the Curtain and nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Panorama Journal, which also carried his short story The Perfect Guide in November 2023. His novella-in-flash A Life in Pieces was published in February 2024 by Alien Buddha press and is available on Amazon. His prize-winning flash story Geoffrey Swaps His Cage features in the April 2024 edition of Writing Magazine. He live in France, just over the border from Geneva, Switzerland.
A Life in Pieces: The Origins, Childhood, Crimes, Misdemeanours, Loves, Infidelities, and Imminent Demise of Edward Newman: Lewis, D. X., Buddha, Alien: 9798868464263: Amazon.com: Books
By
D.X. Lewis
The crematorium is busy, the car park full. Pall-bearers carry lavish wreaths and “floral tributes” to the chapel. Someone important will soon go up in smoke. But I am not here to attend a VIP funeral. I am here to mark the 20th anniversary of my mother's sudden death, by visiting the spot where her ashes are scattered.
Grandpa, my mother's dad, died during my last year at university. I did not attend the funeral: Gran told me to focus on my Finals. Five years later Gran herself faded out in an old people's home. I was here for that. And then Mum died very fast of acute leukemia before I could make it home. I remember kissing her cold face in the hospital morgue, the blank faces of relatives at the crematorium six days later, and the desolation of watching the curtain close on her coffin in the chapel.
The shadows on this cold clear All Saints Day are already long. I walk through the “Garden of Rest”, past the building with the list of tariffs for the various services on offer. Past the café, Sally’s Solace, where waiting undertakers are drinking tea at formica tables or smoking on the terrace.
I reach the back of the garden. Small flower-beds in the darkening shade. Dark green foliage behind. Discreet, modest, away from the limelight. Just like my mother and her parents. Not like whoever is being incinerated this afternoon.
Both Grandpa and Mum were keen gardeners, so I am pleased their remains are now literally pushing up roses — small white blooms still resisting the cool of late autumn. And then clumps of lavender exuding a scent I associate with Gran and the fusty musty house she kept.
Disturbed by traffic noise from the road behind the fence, I walk to what looks like a miniature chapel in the middle of the garden. Inside is a computer terminal at which visitors may enter the name of anyone they wish to remember.
I type in the names of my grandfather, grandmother and mother in turn. Each time, the screen lights up with a golden book and gothic lettering like the start of a Disney film. Digital pages flutter to entries listing their dates of birth, death and cremation.
I feel a rush of cold. The late afternoon light turns suddenly to dusk. I shudder. My hairs stand on end. An intense smell of roses and lavender fills the room. I sense my grandparents behind me and my mother to my right.
"I came to say goodbye," says my mother’s voice, as if on a bad phone connection. "But why don't you join us?"
A large figure in a cloak looms up behind me. The room is now almost pitch black. “Yes, why don’t you?” he croaks, wielding a scythe.
The digital pages flutter again to display my own name. As I fall, I glimpse the date of death: 31 October 2024.
A recovering journalist and former writer on AIDS for WHO, D. X. Lewis now devotes himself to other forms of fiction -- from novels and works for the stage to increasingly short fiction. His short stories, flashes and micros have been published by Story Nook, Writers’ Forum, Flash Fiction, 101words, Splonk, Planet Paragraph, Fairfield Scribes, National Flash Fiction Day, and in Bath, Fish and Oxford anthologies. The first chapters of Made in Hungary, an unpublished novel, were published as Crossing the Curtain and nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Panorama Journal, which also carried his short story The Perfect Guide in November 2023. His novella-in-flash A Life in Pieces was published in February 2024 by Alien Buddha press and is available on Amazon. His prize-winning flash story Geoffrey Swaps His Cage features in the April 2024 edition of Writing Magazine. He live in France, just over the border from Geneva, Switzerland.
A Life in Pieces: The Origins, Childhood, Crimes, Misdemeanours, Loves, Infidelities, and Imminent Demise of Edward Newman: Lewis, D. X., Buddha, Alien: 9798868464263: Amazon.com: Books
