Things I Should Have Said and Done

by Colette McCormick

  I examined each face in turn, trying to find another familiar one. There were none, or so I thought, until I saw her. I clasped my hand over my mouth to stop the squeal from escaping and looked at the face I knew so well and had missed so much. I ran to her and threw my arms around her neck. She enveloped me in her arms and once again I was a little girl.

  ‘There you are, love.’ I heard her sweet voice and felt her soft hands stroke my hair. ‘It’s all right, don’t be upset. Gran’s here.’

  ‘I can’t believe you’re here,’ I said looking into the face I hadn’t seen in over twenty years.

  ‘I wish I weren’t.’ She pushed my hair away from my eyes.

  ‘Yeah, you and me both,’ I agreed. ‘But it’s lovely to see you.’

  She asked those next to her if they would shuffle along to make room for us. It was a bit of a squeeze but it was good to be close to her again.

  ‘Morning, George,’ my grandmother said.

  ‘Betty.’

  ‘How do you know my gran?’ I asked.

  ‘That’d be telling,’ George said with a smile. He held a finger to his lips and nodded to the front of the church.

  I strained to hear the priest’s words.

  ‘Take comfort,’ he said, ‘from knowing that Ellen now dwells in a better place. She is with the Eternal Father in a place without pain … a place without hatred.’ He paused and looked at those assembled before him. ‘Tragic though her loss is, rejoice for her that she is with the Lord.’ I noticed that Marc was squirming in his seat. ‘Ellen was a good and loyal wife to Marc and a loving mother to their daughter Naomi …’

  I moved my head close to my gran’s. ‘I’ve never met this man before,’ I whispered.

  ‘… Weep not for Ellen but for yourselves. Ellen has no need for your tears.’

  ‘Don’t I?’ I asked through the corner of my mouth.

  ‘There are worse places,’ Gran said in that way that grans do.

  Maybe she was right; this wasn’t such a bad place when you compared it to the likes of the Calcutta slums or a Dickensian workhouse, but I’d rather be alive. So go on, I almost shouted, cry if you want.

  My mother was crying a lot. Her shoulders shook and her head was buried in her hands. My dad has his arm around her trying to give what comfort he could. Marc’s eyes never seemed to leave the coffin but I couldn’t say if he was actually looking at it or not. His eyes had been vacant when he’d passed us in the churchyard and I don’t know if he was seeing anything. Naomi, my darling child, was she oblivious to what was happening? She appeared to be playing with the hem of her dress.

  The saddest figure of all was my grandfather. Tears poured from his eyes and fell off the edge of his face and onto his chest. He made no attempt to hide them. He didn’t sob the way his daughter did, his tears seemed effortless. I found it painful to watch him but too difficult to drag my eyes away. I turned to my grandmother and saw she was watching the man that death had separated her from so long ago. She felt my eyes and turned to me. I noticed the merest hint of a smile on her face.

  ‘He’ll be free soon,’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She squeezed my hand. ‘He tries to hide it,’ she explained,’ but he’s in a lot of pain. The drugs don’t work as well as they used to.’

  ‘Why doesn’t he get stronger ones?’

  She laughed ‘Because he’s proud.’ She looked at her husband with gentle eyes. ‘Your granddad doesn’t want to admit that the disease has got the better of him.’ She looked at me and sniffed away a hint of a tear. ‘You’ve got to realise that when we were younger, cancer was a dirty word … and a death sentence.’

  ‘But it’s not now,’ I told her. ‘They can do all sorts of things that they couldn’t then.’

  ‘He’s tired, love.’ We both watched as he struggled to stand. ‘He’s ready.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Soon.’ We stood up along with the rest of the congregation. ‘Soon.’

  It’s an odd feeling watching your loved ones touch a coffin in a final farewell knowing you are the one lying inside it. It was family members only at the cremation and each one took a turn to touch me one last time. My dad’s sister Claire stroked the coffin and her husband Paul patted it. My cousin Philip made a fist and thumped it gently. My mother couldn’t bring herself to touch the box. She stood in front of it with her eyes wide open and her hands over her mouth. My dad kissed his fingertips and laid them where my head was.

  Marc and Naomi were the last to approach the coffin.

  Naomi raised her arms and Marc lifted her up. In her hand was another daffodil. I hadn’t noticed it because its colour was a perfect match for her dress. She took the flower, my favourite, and laid it where my hands would be resting on my stomach, a partner for the one that she had laid inside the coffin the night before. Marc lowered her to the ground. Slowly, he nodded his head, then he adjusted the daffodil’s position slightly to the left. He stepped back and gathered his daughter into his arms again. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held him tightly. Our eyes locked and I know Naomi saw me.

  Everyone watched as the coffin moved slowly through the velvet curtains, and the ordeal was over.

  I’d thought that there would be music, so the silence surprised me.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I didn’t go to the wake. That would have been too weird. Besides, I wanted to spend some time with my gran. I had missed her so much.

  ‘I don’t have a lot of time,’ she warned me as we left the crematorium.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Got to get back.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Upstairs,’ she laughed. ‘Well, that’s what we call it but there aren’t really any stairs to climb.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Has George not explained this to you?’ I shook my head. She looked at him. ‘I know this is your first time, George, but I thought they trained you before they let you loose on folk.’

  George shrugged and gave a grin.

  Gran looked at me, ‘This isn’t where I live,’ she said, taking hold of me hands.

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘Like I said, I live upstairs.’

  ‘Then where is it?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly,’ she admitted.

  George came up behind her and put his arm around her shoulders. She tried to smile at him.

  ‘Sorry, Ellen, your gran’s right. I should’ve explained this to you earlier but there’s just so much to remember. Anyway, here goes. I’m a Greeter.’ He held the hand that wasn’t around my gran towards himself.

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A Greeter.’

  ‘Like in a supermarket?’

  ‘Yeah. But we existed before they did.’

  ‘So you “Greetered” me?’

  ‘Yeah, I am your Greeter.’

  ‘Just mine?’

  ‘For now, you’re my first.’

  ‘But not your last?’

  He smiled. ‘That depends on how well I do with you.’

  I was struggling to understand. ‘So this is a job for you?’

  ‘You could call it that.’

  I was puzzled. ‘And what exactly is it that you do?’

  ‘In a nutshell, it’s like this. Do you remember the light?’ I nodded. How could I forget it? ‘Well, when you die …’ I winced at his word. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘but it’s a technical term. When you die you come through the light to here, to where we are now. You stay here until all of your issues have been addressed.’

  ‘What issues?’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. They’re your issues. You know, unfinished business, something you need to take care of before you can move on.’

  ‘Move on to where?’

  ‘Beyond the light.’ He used his arm in a rolling, forward motion. ‘Where your gran lives.’

  ‘But she’s here.’ I reached out and touched her.

  ‘Yes.’ He brought his hands t
ogether in front of his chest. ‘But only for today.’

  ‘Which is why I said we don’t have much time.’ She was still holding my hands and she squeezed them. Then she shook them to make sure she had my full attention. ‘I have to go back soon,’ she said. ‘I just came because …’ She couldn’t finish the sentence and I fell into her arms. It felt good to be back in a familiar place.

  ‘I’ve missed you, Gran,’ I cried as I held onto her.

  ‘I know, darling,’ she soothed. ‘But I’ve watched you every single day. I was there when you married Marc and I was with you when Naomi was born and …’ She held me at arm’s length. ‘Listen carefully, darling. I was there with you last year.’

  What was she talking about?

  Then it dawned on me. My hand clasped over my mouth.

  ‘He lives with me,’ she said softly.

  ‘He?’

  She nodded. ‘When they brought him from the nursery he didn’t have a name. I had to give him one so I called him Matthew.’

  ‘After Granddad?’

  ‘You don’t mind, do you? I didn’t know what else to do. I did think of calling him Marc but I thought you’d have a Marc later on, I didn’t know …’ She didn’t need to tell me she hadn’t known. How could any of us have known a drunken knobhead would cut me off in my prime?

  ‘Where is he?’ I turned my head frantically.

  ‘He’s not here,’ she said, squeezing my hands.

  ‘Why? Why didn’t you bring him?’ I asked.

  ‘It wouldn’t have been right,’ she said and I knew that was true.

  ‘When will I be able to see him?’ Now it was my turn to squeeze her hands.

  ‘When the time is right.’ She freed one of her hands from mine and stroked my face. She looked deep into my eyes. ‘Darling,’ she said, ‘I don’t have much time.’

  ‘Why do you have to go?’ I asked

  ‘Because I can’t stay here,’ she said. ‘This is not where I belong.’

  ‘But I don’t want you to go.’ I felt five years old.

  ‘I know, darling.’ Gran was talking to that five-year-old. ‘And I don’t want to go but I have to. You won’t be on your own, though.’ She tried to laugh. ‘You’ll have George.’

  Even I laughed.

  George was talking to a woman. She was about my age and I didn’t have a clue who she was or why she was at my funeral but that didn’t matter.

  Gran and I sat on the bench on the grassed area opposite the house where my wake was taking place.

  ‘She’ll never get over this,’ Gran said in a voice filled with sadness. ‘You were all she had.’ She paused for a second or two like she was thinking of what to say. ‘There were times when I wanted to slap her. Many times.’ She paused and looked straight ahead. ‘Oh, I know after you were born there was no chance of any more.’ She turned her head slowly and fixed her eyes on me. ‘But that didn’t matter, she had you. Still your mother was spiteful.’

  I must have looked surprised.

  ‘Oh yes, she was. When Lizzie was having her trouble your mother used to parade you around like a trophy.’

  I hadn’t noticed that Gran was crying until she wiped her tears with a lace handkerchief.

  ‘I always knew she would be paid back for that spitefulness.’ She stared silently at her hands. She was twisting the handkerchief, rolling her finger around the fabric again and again until it became a single rope. ‘What goes around comes around, isn’t that what they say?’ I nodded. It was my mother’s mantra. ‘There’s never been a truer word said.’ She flicked the handkerchief open and wiped more tears away. ‘She’ll never get over this,’ she repeated. ‘It’ll finish her off.’

  ‘No, it won’t.’ I said confidently.

  ‘You mark my words, Ellen,’ she said. ‘I know my daughter. She’ll never be the same.’

  There was another pause.

  ‘She blames herself,’ I said.

  ‘Why?’ Gran finally shifted on the seat so she was looking into my face.

  ‘She said it should have been her.’ I shifted so I was face on with the grandmother I’d missed so much. ‘I’d asked if she would pick Naomi up from school and let her stay overnight. I was meeting my friend Megan and we were going to have lunch in town and do some shopping. Megan’s just got married and Marc and I were going to go out with her and her husband for a drink. But Mum said that she wasn’t very well and couldn’t do it so I picked Naomi up from school and called in to see her on the way home.’

  My grandmother was nodding but said nothing.

  ‘When she and Dad came to the Chapel of Rest last night, she kept going on about how it should have been her in the coffin. Apparently, she wasn’t ill at all, she just said that because she was hacked off that I was meeting Megan.’

  Gran’s eyes looked bigger than ever. ‘You know that’s not right, don’t you?’ she said.

  I nodded my head slowly. ‘I do,’ I said. ‘George told me. But I don’t understand.’ I put my hands over my face and took a deep breath. ‘I know it wouldn’t have made a difference and I would still be dead, but I am so angry with her.’ My gran said nothing. She just watched me and nodded her head. That was giving me a green light to rant, which I took without hesitation. ‘What right had she to say who I should and shouldn’t meet? It’s not up to her who I’m friends with. And then …‘ and then there’s that cremation business. She wanted me to be buried because there’s never been a cremation in the family. What’s that all about? And she wants a gravestone so that she’s got somewhere she can go to talk to me. Why?’ I looked at my gran through wide eyes. ‘She was never interested in my opinion, she never listened to me. So why does she want somewhere she can come and talk to me now I’m dead? It’s all show. She wants a dirty great headstone she can lay flowers at every week so everyone will know what a wonderful mother she was.’

  ‘Was she really so bad?’ Gran’s question stopped my tirade in a heartbeat.

  ‘No,’ I had to admit. ‘But I don’t understand why she behaved that way. Why was it always about what the neighbours thought?’

  Gran smiled. ‘That’s just the way she is, love.’ She took my hand again. ‘Your mother loves you so much.’ I knew that was right.

  ‘And I love her, honestly I do. But sometimes she doesn’t make it very easy.’

  ‘You don’t need to tell me,’ she said with a chuckle.

  ‘And then there’s Phil.’

  ‘Who’s Phil?’

  ‘The bloke who killed me.’ I was amazed by the matter of fact way that I could say that. ‘I’ve seen him a couple of times and I’m angry with him. I am really angry with him. I sometimes think that I could kill him but he’s already dead. But so am I and it’s his fault and I hate him for doing it.’ I took in a deep breath and blew it out through loose lips. ‘Now I’ve started to feel sorry for him.’ I looked to where George still sat with the woman I didn’t know. ‘I know that really annoys George because he can’t understand it, but I can’t help it. I just feel sorry for him.’

  She smiled at me. ‘That’s because you’re a good person,’ she said. ‘You’ve always thought of others before yourself and that’ll never change. Your personality doesn’t alter just because you’re dead.’ She smiled and gave a sigh. ‘All I can tell you is that what you’re going through is normal. One minute you’re up, the next you’re down and you don’t know if you’re coming or going.’

  ‘Was it like that for you?’

  She nodded. ‘You’ll get through it.’

  ‘What are these issues that George keeps going on about?’ I asked. ‘What were your issues?’

  She smiled at me in a way that said they were hers and they were staying that way. She made a move to get up from the bench and I knew she was getting ready to leave.

  I helped her to her feet.

  ‘Don’t fight the way you feel,’ she said. ‘Go with it. It’s part of the process.’

  ‘What process?’

  ‘The one that�
�ll take you beyond the light.’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Gran had gone and I was alone with George.

  We were sitting on the wall again.

  ‘Who was that woman?’ I asked

  ‘Which woman?’ He sounded like a man who had been caught doing something he shouldn’t have been.

  I laughed. ‘The one with the red hair and the gingham dress you were talking to after my funeral.’ I couldn’t believe how easily the last two words had tripped off my lips.

  ‘Apparently she was a friend of your mum’s. They used to work together. She reckons she used to change your nappies.’

  ‘I’ve never seen her before.’

  ‘You wouldn’t remember her. She died when you were one. There was a fire in the office block she worked in and their office was on the fifth floor. Nobody got out.’

  ‘What was she called?’

  ‘Maggie.’

  I’d never heard Mum mention her, which made me wonder if my friends wouldn’t talk about me either.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said

  ‘What?’ George didn’t look up from his feet.

  ‘This.’ I waved my arms around. ‘I was at my own funeral this morning, for God’s sake. I spent the afternoon with my grandmother who died when I was a little girl. But now she’s had to leave to go back to wherever she came from because she doesn’t live here any more. And I can’t go with her because I have to stay and resolve my issues. I don’t understand any of it.’

  I looked at George. He had lifted his head and looked at me. Although it was dark, I could see the sadness in his eyes.

  ‘I’ve not done a very good job, have I?’ he said, looking away again. ‘Maybe they were right. I’m not cut out for this.’

  ‘No, you have, George.’ I reached out and took his arm. ‘You have done a great job. It’s just me … I don’t understand anything.’

  ‘What’s to understand?’ he asked. ‘You’re …’

  ‘Dead, I know. Thanks for reminding me.’

  He let his head drop back and puffed out his cheeks, letting the breath out slowly. ‘Sorry,’ he said. He forced a smile and I felt sorry for him.