Rest In Peace

                                                    Rest in Peace

This morning I found my grandmother sitting at the kitchen table.  She had been dead almost five years, but here she was now sitting in my wife’s old seat, covered in mud.

The Johnny Walker bottle was still on the table from last night, along with a shot glass with mud lip prints on the rim.  Sure I was drinking more since Jane left me for another guy – her boss, in fact, but this was no hallucination.  Grandma was back.

Maybe I was hung-over, but I certainly felt sure I was living in the present moment because of the heavy stench of rotten eggs.  I circled the table slowly and saw mud tracks leading from the back door before asking the very scary question.  “Grandma?”

Her eyes shot open.  They were no longer sky blue, but red and rheumy.  I think she slightly tilted her head as if measuring me up.  Or, maybe it was hard for her to keep her head on straight after all this time.

“Grandma…why are you here?  How did you get here?”  I stammered.

At that, I heard rumbling coming from her.  Grandma’s mouth opened to speak, but instead worms, maggots, and a few black beetles spewed out of her mouth onto the red checkered table cloth.

Before I had a chance to throw up in the sink, grandma started yelling.  “Do you believe this crappy dress Earl had me buried in?”  She coughed up smoke and her mouth was now covered in soot.

A million other answers came to mind, but I observed, for the first time, the mud covered clothes she wore.  I saw, what was once, a pink frilly dress with a stand up lace collar.  The dirty pearl buttons down the front tightly held in her ample bosom.

I didn’t know what to say, but it came out anyway.  “Well, once it is cleaned up it will look real nice again,” I sputtered wondering if I should offer to have it washed.

She coughed again and a beetle ran out along the side of her mouth and disappeared into her ear.  Nausea rose up again.

“No – you moron – I want my red flannel nightgown.”  Her voice crackled and I waited for more critters to spill out, but none came.

“Rest in peace means just that.  I’m all itchy and this dress is just plain ugly.  I want my nightgown,” grandma whined like any three-year-old I ever heard.  “Now!” she added.

All I could think to say was “We have to get you back.”

“Not until I get my nightgown and I’m hungry, too.”  With that she picked up one of the worms from the pile on the table and put it in her mouth.

I turned and threw up in the sink.

Shame on me, but I lifted up muddy grandma and took her to the shed.  I slid her into the seat of my brand new John Deere rider lawn mower and placed the Johnny Walker bottle in her lap.  I locked up the shed good and tight and then I went to find the damn red flannel nightgown.


Middle Scene Synopsis

The grandson drives to grandpa Earl’s house and sneaks in using the key left under the mat.  Grandpa Earl is asleep on the sofa and since he is deaf and almost blind, the grandson is able to snoop around the house looking for grandma’s old clothes.  When he doesn’t find anything, he remembers the attic and tackles the many mothball smelling boxes that contain clothes.  After the exhausting search in the sweltering heat of the attic he realizes he is now locked inside.  Grandpa Earl has closed the latch.  Since grandpa is deaf, he does not hear the yelling and pounding from his grandson.  The grandson passes out on all the clothes.

When he comes around again, he discovers if he stacks all the boxes he will be able to climb out a small window that will get him to the roof.  From the roof he must shimmy down a tree, but he falls part of the way down and sprains his ankle.  While he is nursing his ankle a dog comes and tries to snare the nightgown.  They both struggle for it and the nightgown becomes tattered.  The grandson and the nightgown eventually get home to grandma.

Closing Scene Synopsis

Back at the shed, the grandson leaves the nightgown for grandma so she can switch clothes.  He tells her he will be back shortly and he can return her to the cemetery.  He takes a shower and puts on fresh clothes.  He returns to the shed only to discover that grandma has disappeared, and so has the John Deere rider mower.