Famous Last Words... Maybe
It’s a comforting feeling to see everyone gathered in one place, exchanging stories with each other about the most mundane things, but laughing uproariously about it as if it were the funniest joke ever told. Life gets that way sometimes, especially when you’ve been dealt such a tragic blow that you begin to see the humor in the most minuscule thing. Grandma is telling all the girls about the first time she met Grandpa; he showed up for their date with a big hole in his pants and he had no clue about it. That is until he excused himself from the table and went to use the bathroom. Grandma said she had to wait for him outside the men’s room just let him know that his pants were torn. She wanted to save him the embarrassment of having to walk back into that crowded Chinese restaurant called ‘Lau Yee Chai.’
She ended up having him take her home where she made dinner for the both of them. She was only sixteen back then and Grandpa was already an old man of twenty. They were married for fifty years before Grandpa died of natural causes. “Not my time to go yet though,” Grandma assured everyone who sat around her. “My daughters all busy and work daytime, who going watch my mo’opuna?”Across the living room sat Uncle Henry with all of his buddies from the club, what exactly that club was nobody ever knew but that’s how they referred to themselves. Their conversations consisted of drunken facial expressions than actual words. In between the rise of an eyebrow or the squinting of the eyes, there was uncontrollable laughter. I guess the joke was on everyone else because no one had a clue as to what they were talking about. Gathered around the kitchen table were the people from my generation, the 30 and 40 somethings, the ones who were either satisfied with life or the ones who felt cheated. They talked about everything and nothing but by the end of the evening a few of the married ones exchanged numbers with the other married ones and the affairs would commence. Grandpa always said that people who fool around are people who are not happy with themselves and they feel that the answer is out there somewhere outside of them when it’s really inside. “Once you’re happy inside, there’s no need to be distracted by anything else.”
Then there’s the 50’s and up, I call them the ‘Been there done that’ crowd. They sit in each others company and they don’t say a word because really they’ve been there and they’ve done it all. They have nothing further to prove and they can feel that from one another, it’s a mutual respect thing. Right now, all the kids and the aloof, self-absorbed teenagers are called into the living room because dinner is about to start. Grandma gets up to give the prayer but as she does so, she signals to my sister Sierra to hand her the urn. Everyone bows their heads as they await the prayer from Grandma but she never gets to do it, not in her own voice anyway. You see, that’s me in the urn and I’m about to scare the living shit out of everyone by possessing Grandma’s body and making her do unspeakable things to herself.
No one will be able to stop her unless I stop. Oh, I will. Eventually, I will but not today. I literally have a bone to pick with her after all those years of physical, mental, and sexual abuse from her and Grandpa. Maybe I’ll make her clean herself down to the bone? What do you think?
Anyway, her prayer is about to begin, stay or go but if you’re going to go, then run. If you’re going to stay, then take pictures.
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