Happy Death Society

The realms of miracle, death, pain and suffering were always appealing to my grandmother Helena, so as soon as Smarhon got its own Happy Death Society, grandma joined it with gladness. Moreover, my grandma Helena being a devout Catholic would eagerly embrace all that the church had to offer, having sung daily in the church choir for the living. Then, when somebody died, her voice would also sound for the deceased. This lasted until she decided to lie down in bed to await a happy death.

“It's like our old man with a candle, held it himself, kissed a cross, got a communion from a priest, and died a quick death in full sanity. A happy death,” Grandma Helena would explain after Grandpa Juzik, who had been faithfully turning her body on the bed and rubbing it with pure alcohol, died. They often argued who would die first. Grandpa went ahead, while grandma kept awaiting her happy death still in bed. Death doesn't show up, but a dream does: Helena is in front of the enormous Gates of Heaven amongst other folk in a line up, gazing contentedly at the gates as she's drawn by wondrous gardens, but the voice says: “It's not the time yet”.

It has been seven years. The bed became a place of lamentation and prayer. Lena's bones are burning as if with hellfire, same as the tortures of the damned in the pictures my grandmother showed to me in my childhood as part of my religious upbringing. Amen.