Immediately After the Funeral (cont’d)

Immediately After the Funeral (cont’d)

       By Dugless (Butchy) Riskmore

Immediately after the funeral all the men and women and children who had come to see her one last time, even if in her coffin, filed out of the chapel and drove to Winkler, Boissevain, Three Hills, Wichita, Chapel Hill, Swift Current, Clydesdale, British Isles, Desmoisne, Idaho in Ohio, and Deluse. Each of them had, in some measure, reason to wish that her form still graced this world. Without her in it the possibilities of afterlife felt more necessary and those of this life less likely.

       She once took me with her when she went shopping for a bathing suit for the summer. I should mention that she was a single woman all her life. She dated men often but never married one of them. The female clothing section of this store, which sold both men’s and ladies lines, had a cool, greenish feel to it, with rows of clothing under hot pot lights quite near one’s head. One’s hair felt heated when one walked under one of these. I am a redhead with thinnish, orange-colored hair. I have a great many freckles, and in those days, being twelve, when I still did not mind the effects of the sun on my skin, I often had enflamed cheeks and nose with reddish, unhappy knuckles and white, blotchy feet in sandals. I was probably dressed in baggy, tan shorts with a Bluejays shirt. I remember this because I was able to hide my difficulties if I stayed sitting.

       Aunty picked up four suits and pointed to a chair facing the curtain behind which she would try these on. I knew what an ordeal I was in for, I thought, simply waiting here, knowing she stood there taking and putting things on and off. I did not know, though, the full extent of what I would endure. The curtain was fully closed at first, but shortly I noticed it bulging and moving as she came in contact with it. It opened about six inches and Aunty did not notice. I could see her plainly. A pot light shone down from above her and another one from in front of the cubicle. It was the last cubicle and I was the only one nearby and on one could walk past. I sat just a few feet from the curtain.

       I saw Aunty unbutton her sundress behind and pull it off at the shoulders. She hung it up and stood before the mirror in panties and brassiere. She was tall and also tanned. Her bum was round without the knobbly wedges that my mom had on hers when she was at the beach. Her arms were long and slim, and when she reached behind her to unclasp her bra they looked like the necks of swans looking to see what was behind them. She never glanced at the curtain and must not have thought to. I could watch with total intent and not be seen. Aunty removed her underwear and stood, the most beautiful, tall, shapely woman that, in all my manly years, I have endured the sight of. Her breasts were firm, her shoulders held back in pride, her arms long and silky, her hair black and cut short just below the chin, her ears delicate, her hair in the front black, too, and as shiny as that on her head, her stomach, buttoned, with a small curve to it that I can never in my art duplicate, her hips slender and round, her thighs damp, translucent (I saw because she spread them momentarily to see if the suit fit there nicely), her ankles not bulgy like Aunty Caroline’s, her feet pretty, ending in toes as uniform as one would be blessed to see once in one’s lifetime. She had a pertempestuous figure, gifted in its crying shames, limping along in Italian sandals with sand in them from the beach to the cottage, swollen still, a tasty bun of a body that I have thought about nightly for these ten or twelve years.

       Aunty came out of the cubicle after she had tried on all four suits. Each had come off fast and each next one come on slowly. When she had spent an hour there, and I was spent, too, she suddenly noticed the curtain opened and reached and closed it. I breathed, finally, and got up and right away sat down again. Aunty came out in a minute and wanted to go but I said that I was tired and could we just wait a few more minutes. She looked at a rack of dresses, held up one at a time to her bodice and asked if this or that one would look good on her. I nodded yes to them all.

       Aunty died suddenly. It was not an illness but some other event that claimed her. The men and women sat in many rows, quietly, saying little, even at the free mick when they had a chance to reminisce and tell what they remembered about her. I did not get up either so I was no better than the rest. Immediately after the funeral I got in my car and drove back to Stonewall where I have my studio.