Gray (1)

“You were very rude back there Emily, as if I haven’t got enough to deal with,” she didn’t turn in her seat to look at me but kept staring straight ahead at the road before us.
“Well, it wasn’t Granddad in the urn,” I replied, folding my arms and sighing. The man’s hands had been shaking slightly as he’d offered the urn to us. I looked behind him and could see an old man standing there. It wasn’t my Granddad.
“He’s not in there,” I said. The man with the urn blinked furiously then and swallowed,
“Excuse me?” he asked.
“He’s not in there, that’s not my Granddad,” I replied, waving my hand at the urn.
“I can assure you…”
“You’ve made a mistake,” I interrupted. Mum nudged me and hissed,
“That’s enough Emily,” whilst wiping one eye with a crumpled tissue. I asked the man to check again and she turned away to look at the graveyard with its tightly packed headstones and dead trees. My Dad tried to hold her hand but she kept it relaxed by her side, so he just held her fingers. The man with the urn turned away from me and went back into the grey building. The old man that had been standing behind him nodded in thanks and followed.
Mum was still staring straight ahead. I glanced to my right and my Granddad was sitting there, smiling at me. His eyes were creased up and the folds of old skin like dried leather were bunched up around his small mouth. He reached out his hand and I rested mine upon it. He was cold, so cold it hurt like a freeze burn.
“Turn the heater on,” my Mum said and my Dad fiddled with the dials in front of him so hot air circulated around the small car. She hugged the urn to her stomach as she sat there, “Emily, you were being ridiculous,” she continued.
“Well, that’s not the same urn the guy tried to give us before,” I replied. I smiled at my Granddad as he sat beside me. My Mum looked at the urn then, she noticed that the pattern around the lid was no longer gold leaves but silver ivy tendrils like she had ordered. She didn’t say anything. She stared out the front window and stayed silent for the rest of the journey as I held my Granddad’s hand in the back seat.

He went away after a couple of days, after we had buried his ashes near the cherry tree and the bench in the garden. I sat there with him until he left and held his hand. He was silent, but I talked to him about everything. About how much I would miss him and how I would visit Granny every weekend and that I would finish planting the herb garden we had started and that I would send a bunch of flowers to that lovely nurse in the hospital who had made sure he was comfortable. He always smiled at me but never reacted to what I said. They never do. I didn’t mind though, it was nice to just sit with him, but then he was gone and I never sat on that bench again.

I’ve always seen them, always felt them. They’re everywhere. Some are trying to make contact with people they knew and some just walk around aimlessly, confused. They’re eyes are always blank, endless tunnels. There is no life in them anymore because they have no purpose. There is nothing left to do but wait until you can move on.

There was a memorial service being held at our school. I knew the boy but had never spoken to him. He was one of those tall, athletic types with blonde hair and green eyes. He had been one of those tall, athletic types with blonde hair and green eyes. I knew he was dead before our head teacher had made the announcement. I’d never spoken to the boy because I find it easier to talk to the dead. I don’t find the living approachable. As a child I had had numerous dead friends, little girls who had gone missing, old ladies who had passed away with their family sobbing at their side, young men who had gotten into a drunken state and staggered into the path of an oncoming car or fell into a cold river and drowned. They had a way of finding me. The older ones would sit and watch over me as I slept and the younger ones would watch me play in the garden and listen to me chat at them in an animated way. My Mum would watch from the kitchen window and think what an odd child I was but I was oblivious to her scrutiny. Adam Gray. That’s what the boy’s name was. I’d watched him in the corridors making his way to his next class, his red bag hanging loosely from his right shoulder and his hands moving excitedly as he talked to his friends. I’d stared at the back of his well groomed head in English, where he answered all the questions on Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ correctly and in History when he recited the important dates and events in the Second World War. Our eyes met sometimes as I watched him and he would smile, his mouth was full of white teeth framed with pink lips, they looked like they tasted sweet. Sometimes he would stop in front of my table and turn his head to look at me, his mouth half open as if he wished to say something. Then he would just nod and turn away to sit in his normal place with his friends. The school had made a little shrine to him in the assembly hall and everyone had laid flowers and lit candles around a picture of him that had been enlarged and put into a frame. I didn’t visit his memorial or attend the service. I thought everyone who did was a hypocrite. Everyone who cried over him but had never spoken to him was a big, fat hypocrite. He didn’t find me for a long time though. Sometimes if the death was violent they need time to re adjust.

It was a cold, miserable day and I sat on a swing in the deserted park near my house. The wind blew my dark hair around my face and into my eyes and whipped my scarf up and around my head. I swung slowly back and forth. I thought that if I swung too high and too fast I might fly away like Dorothy and her little dog. I wanted to give it a go but was afraid, so I just swung a little, lifting my long legs off the floor but letting the toes of my shoes drag on the soft, rubber tiles intended to soften the blow if you fell. He was sitting on a bench opposite the swing set watching me, the wind blew his blonde hair and ruffled the loose white t shirt he wore. He’d been missing for three weeks before someone found his body in the abandoned on the side of the road, the victim of a hit and run. I stopped swinging and stared back at him. I stood and walked over and sat down on the bench. We looked at each other for a moment and I stared into his green eyes. They were alive. They weren’t tunnels or endless voids, they glimmered in the grey afternoon. He took in every detail of my face with his slow, sweeping gaze then smiled gently at me.
“Adam Gray,” I said to him. He continued to smile at me, “They had a memorial service for you at school. I didn’t go though,” I smoothed out the creases in my skirt that the wind had created as it pulled at the fabric, “Mr Palmer made a speech in assembly the other week. I didn’t know you were part of the literature club. I was going to join but…didn’t,” I looked at him, he was no longer smiling but watching me intently, drinking in every word I was saying to him. “I wish you could talk,” I sighed. I looked out across the park; the swing was rocking back and forth by itself now in the wind. I turned back to Adam but he was gone.

© Copyright Jade Tolley 2011