After my father’s funeral on Saturday, most people were going back to my eldest sister’s house for a reception. I drove there with my twin sister, her husband and my mother, who wanted to stop at her place on the way home so she could change clothes and drop off the flowers and urn.
When we got to her apartment building, we dropped Mom at the front door so we could park, telling her we’d carry everything in. After parking my brother-in-law, Tom, took the flowers, my sister, Andrea, took purses because she had a key to Mom’s building, and I carried the urn. Once in the building, we pushed the button for the elevator and got on as soon as the doors opened. We didn’t realize it was going down until it started. No matter. It was only one floor down.
When the elevator doors opened in the basement, a very tall man and a short woman got on. Realizing what we carried, the man avoided eye contact. The woman took it all in with her eyes. You could see her looking at the flowers, reading the words on them: Husband, Father, Grandfather. She looked at me, the bearer of the urn, and said, “Is that him?”. All I could do was nod.
It was all over in a moment. The doors opened on the 3rd floor and they stepped out. As soon as the doors closed, we burst into laughter. I’m sure they could hear us as we travelled all the way up to the tenth floor.
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