Grandfather

Yayu.



Dark.  The mood, the day, the clothes, the feeling; trapped in darkness.  We all began to walk like shadowy ghosts – without a sound.  Without him.  Rain trickled down in thick droplets, dripping off the rubbery rhododendrons that draped over the path that wound its way up the hill.  We walked past a lamenting statue of Mary; her blue robes bleached white, her once brown hair now ashen.  We walked faster, the slow rain fitting the occasion.  So many people had come, so many I did not know or had never seen before but still they walked with us.  Sorrow dripped and ran from my Nana’s eyes; sorrow would soon dance in the flames of the alter candles; sorrow hung over his cold coffin – sorrow it seemed was everywhere.  This was the day that Fernando Enrique Omegna, my great granda, was to be carried to his grave. 



I knew little of him.  He was always Yayu to us.  His skin, his eyes, his dusty voice all spoke of his homeland – Italy. His habits also spoke of his land; continually he ate olive oil with bread saying it was to “grease his joints”. Although Italian, he was always dressed in Scottish tweed outfits, brown and white with a small hat to match.  It was strange to see such a distinct foreigner dressed in such clothing.  Although his toffee skin was cracked and split with lines that crisscrossed over his ancient face and his hair the bleakest white, his eyes did not so easily surrender his age.  His vivid blue eyes smiled when his mouth couldn’t but equally they screamed – they screamed for release; screamed when his mouth lay quiet; screamed to be liberated from the torment of useless muscles and stiff, cracking bones.  Of age.  Beneath the high arches of a ragged green chair Death fought him.  Yayu sat, his head resting a good half of the way down.  His white hair sat like thick, whipped cream on toffee skin.  Cream had also clung to his eyebrows in great tufts dropping over the edges, dipping into the blue eyes that spoke so much.  Yet Death finally won.  His hand sweeping down to leave a cold casket of our Yayu.  I won’t tell you that he died asleep, peacefully - dreaming of better places.  He didn’t.  He suffered slowly.  Agonizingly.  His lungs choking, filling up until he couldn’t breathe.  Only then did he die.



Our phantom forms walked on.  Our black shoes flecked with gravel passing through the tiny rivers.  Up and above the drooping rhododendrons, the bent spire of the church loomed, foreboding.  We would soon be there and all our ghostly forms would transform into the people who knew him; not just the shadowy creatures moving silently along the sodden track.



Our mother had told us. Quietly and quickly.  My reaction mirrored her delivery.  It may seem callous and cold to just blank emotions out but it was and still is my way of dealing with tragedy.  I simply move on without thinking too much.  Only later do I let emotion show; only later do I really think about death.  Thoughts and questions creep into my mind.  Will I have a funeral that large?  Will I be remembered? Will I have a great grandson thinking these thoughts? Or will I die alone?  It scares me to think that soon it may be me lying in a cold ancient church.  Waiting.  My hand touches and pulls on a black iron gate. Still we trudge on...



Ironically, I know so much more about him now.  He met his future wife in Spain; their love broken after the Spanish Civil War began as she flew to Britain where she cared for Spanish children.  He was then arrested due to his Italian heritage during the Second World War…I’m proud of it, my heritage.  It leaves another world to explore.  Leaves an escape from cold, high mountains and rain and square, clean buildings and summers without sun.  It draws me into a place of heat and passion; of starred nights and dark faces.  It paints some kind of picture of golden swathes and red sunsets.  It leaves a place which I do not know how or who or where: a place to be discovered. 



His wife was here, Yaya.  Now in front of me, with my Nana her small wrinkled body swathed in black; her head held proud; resilient.  Ninety years old: still showing no signs of kneeling to Age.



More of the church came into view.  Small and ancient.  Its vivid stained glass windows stood out against the onslaught of blackness that began to cross its doors.  It was no more inviting inside than out. The crumbling stones were the only insulation and dipping my fingers in the font, crossing myself, I passed through.  It lay there; huge and protruding – overpowering in a sense – it was all I seemed to be capable of looking at.  It caught the glow from the burning electrical heaters high up in the ceiling and the dancing flittering candles that were strewn behind the alter.  A coffin…  The coffin…  Instead of the usual muted voices or the rustling of dusty bibles that usually took place before a mass, there was almost a complete silence.  Only nods of recognition went out to friends and silent handshakes met with silent emotions; nobody dared to shatter the silence before the priest. 



Unadorned white robes; a small fragile looking man. Thin glasses riding on the tip of his nose; his bald head trapping the light.  He took his place and began to speak.  The funeral progressed in its grey way, only broken by the brightness of a hymn or the darkness of stifled sobs.  Many close family members read or offered their praises to Yayu and what he had accomplished throughout his life.  The mass was now not about God but of just a man.  Yet he was more than ‘just a man’ to us.  He was Yayu and this was to remember life; and mourn death.  Then the coffin was raised.  The lights deep inside its gleaming wood shifting and melting.



Yaya now began to crumble; her proud head buried in my Nana’s shoulder, weeping bitterly.  The coffin bearers solemnly marched onwards down the aisle, turning once again into dark ghosts.  They carried onwards, our heads following, not daring to leave sight of their lifeless cargo.  As they passed out into the rain our heads snapped back. We then began to leave the old, cold church; its windows now darker.



We followed behind the coffin, in threes or fours.  We halted shortly after leaving the church, forming a dark ring around a car.  A hearse’s back doors opened and swallowed a coffin into its yawning black mouth.  Then it departed.



We did not. We stayed and thought, about him; how he died but more about how he lived.  How he complained, how he grumbled, how he cursed in eloquent Italian which only his daughter understood and had then thrown reproaching, remanding looks at him.  Yet for all that they still loved him.



My father jokes that I have too much of my mother’s blood in me; jokes that I have picked up bad habits from Yayu’s side.  I don’t agree.  I want to discover my heritage and Italian past but I don’t believe it affects me or who I am.  Each of us chooses our own paths; and our own lives.  I have the greatest respect for the wizened brown man who was Yayu – but I would never want to follow in his footsteps.  I have to create my own.