Out Of The Box
He peered over the edge, his tiny face barely reaching over the top of the wooden frame. Everything seemed so strange, everyone was all puffy-eyed and serious. He knew what had happened, but what else was he to do?
It had been a while since he had seen his grandpa, but he didn’t realize that he would see him like this.
They had tried to keep it from him. His mother had called home, and his brother had shut off the movie they had been watching. Suddenly, everyone was talking in hushed tones, hurried whispers that he could only understand snatches of. But he was nine, not stupid. He knew what had happened. So he simply played along, not saying anything.
But then his grandmother came home, and she was crying. Strangely, as soon as she came home, everyone glanced at him. Everyone did it, that quick head-turn in his direction. It made him a little angry. What, did they think he wouldn’t be able to handle it? Did they think that delaying it would make it better?
Didn’t they realize that he had as much right to know as everyone else?
It had only been a matter of time, but it was still strange. Everyone kept saying that he was in a better place, that there was no pain where he had gone. But how could his grandfather have been going through so much pain? Whenever he had seen him, he always had a smile on his face. He always had a quip to make the people around him smile.
Even though it took some effort, he always had arms that were willing to reach out and hug his grandson.
What pain?
And then it came to this. Everyone was pale, and everyone was crying. Everyone was in white, and again, people kept looking at him. But he wasn’t going to cry.
Because he knew something that they didn’t. His grandpa wasn’t really in that box.
They picked up the casket and started to move it down to the car that would take it away.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. He smiled.
He looked up, into the ever-smiling face of his grandpa.
Without saying a word, he slipped his hand into the larger, warm, comforting one of his grandfather-just like he had done so many times before. Those famous walks that they used to take together-collecting those red seeds (Devil’s Eyes, he called them), looking at the turkeys in the compound of one building, trying to persuade his grandpa to buy chewing gum.
So, hand in hand, with smiles on their faces, they walked.
