Lats Kiss

I must’ve been 6 or 7 when she died. Look at me now, no matter how many times my grandmother says, “It’ll be X years tomorrow that she died…” I still can’t remember the date we buried my great grandmother. But I can remember the day.
To the six grandkids that were too young to be the somber mourners it was like any other day. Only this time we were in a new place, never ventured by any of us, and the fact that there were so many strange people loitering around did nothing to deter us. It was play time.
The minute we stepped through the door we began to run. It didn’t stop for a long time. We circled every person standing. Climbed or tried to climb the flower stands. We ran around and crawled under every bench and chair, between peoples legs if we had to. We ran through the funeral home to the many adjoining rooms.
The snack room bore many sandwiches and more coffee than we had ever seen. Also, many failed attempts to run our hands up the candy machines and grab something from the bottom rack.
The restrooms, a lot of flushing, automatic hand dryers going off, and numerous dares to go into the opposite genders room. I have to note that this was also the first time I had ever seen a urinal (many years later I would be known for sabotaging them)
Then it was too the second viewing room. Another corpse lay on display to a room filled with no one. A single light perched above the elderly woman’s face was the only light in the room. It cast a mysterious shadowy light over her pleasantly wrinkled features and I soon found myself enraptured by this room. I was pulled away when I tried to venture closer with tugs of, ‘Don’t be disrespectful!’ carrying me back into our own viewing room.
We ran about in our room amongst unknown kin until a man in an especially black suit gained control over the crowd of mourners.
The sermon ended about 45 minutes later and the people lined up to say a final farewell to the deceased. My mom rounded up her brood of three and picked us up one by one to give our Mamaw Hughes a final kiss. When it was my turn I leaned over and somberly pecked her lips like I always had when we came to visit.
I can remember it as though it was yesterday, and I truly believe that her lips were warm. It may have, and some people will say the same, that all of my memories of her when she was alive had kicked in and they just seemed warm. As I was hoisted back down away from her pale face I thought to myself the same thing I had said to her every time I left the room,
“See you later, Mamaw Hughes!”
She’s been gone now for who knows how many years but I can still remember her face when we all came rushing into her bedroom at once to give her a kiss.
It was an unspoken chore with the grandkids,
“Kiss your Mamaw Hughes before you go play!”
It wasn’t something that we dreaded doing, like cleaning the room, but it also wasn’t something that we wanted to do first thing.
And even now, as I sit pecking at the keys in my slow saunter I think of all the times I should’ve given up mud pies to be with my Mamaw Hughes.
Maybe then Id have more to write about her than just what I can remember from her funeral.
~**! THINGS I REMEMBER! **~
•She had no teeth (so her face was forever scrunched
•She chewed tobacco
•She always wore flowered dresses of the same style
•She smelled like laundry soap (her only perfume)
•She would squint her eyes when she kissed us
•She always wore her hair up
•She was never told that her husband was murdered by her son (I have yet to know how they covered it up)