Where You Are

The Funeral

Birgitta

Jesse had been gone for four days when he called while I was on my way home from work. He would be off his work rotations now and we'd actually have a chance to really talk. I missed him. All we'd managed in the four days since he'd left were a couple of quick chats and tons of texts. I grinned and answered it via the Bluetooth in my car. Jesse must have been able to see from the tracking app that I'd left the hospital.

'Hi,' I said cheerfully once the call had connected. 'You make it home alright?'

'My... my nan's died,' he said, sounding understandably distraught.

I felt my breath catch in my throat and the giddiness I'd felt at the prospect of hearing Jesse's voice again evaporate.

'Oh... oh, Jesse,' I said softly. 'That's terrible news. Was it expected?'

'My uncle Steve just found her in bed in her flat,' he went on. 'She wasn't answering her phone all day, so he went to check on her.'

'I'm so sorry, Jesse,' I said quietly.

'The funeral's on Friday,' he said, his voice breaking and my heart clenched. 'At the little church we all go to at Christmas and Easter. She had everything arranged already, apparently.'

I already hated the distance between us, but it was even worse knowing he was hurting and I couldn't be there to comfort him.

'Do you want me to try to get the day off work?' I asked, biting my lip.

'No, no!' He said. 'Well, actually yeah, sort of, but I'm not saying that so you'll come. I just need to talk to someone about it. I feel like I'm in a bit of a fog.'

'Was it expected?' I asked him, already going through the work schedule in my head to see if anyone might be willing to trade shifts with me.

'Well, no,' he said. 'Actually, she was ninety-six, so maybe yes? I knew she wasn't going to live forever. I just thought there would be a bit of warning before it actually happened.'

'At least she didn't suffer,' I told him quietly. 'That's the way I'd want to go, just go to sleep one night and never wake up.'

'I wish you could have met her,' he groaned. 'She wasn't feeling well the weekend you came to visit to meet everyone else. I ought to have known.'

'What was she like?' I asked softly.

'She was a force to be reckoned with!' He said, some of his normal energy coming back to his voice. 'Still went to the supermarket herself to do her own shopping. Mum and my uncles took turns driving her the last couple of years, but she pushed her own trolley and everything. She moved into the assisted living flats a couple of years ago, she went kicking and screaming though! She hated to admit that it wasn't exactly safe for her to live on her own anymore. I think Mum and Dad might have taken her in, but she wouldn't have heard of it. Didn't want to be a burden.'

I listened to Jesse tell me stories about his grandmother for the rest of the drive home. He told me about the fruit pastilles she kept in a jar on the top shelf in her kitchen that he and his brothers came up with creative ways to get down. She taught him how to play croquet and had a raspberry bush in her back garden. She'd told him he was mad for wanting to become a pilot because they have the shortest lifespans of anyone in the military, even though he'd assured her that the war was over and he wanted to be a commercial pilot, not a member of the Royal Air Force. She'd been a nurse herself during the Second World War.

He kept me on the phone late into the night, just getting everything out. After about an hour of talking, he started to cry. He tried to hide it, but I could tell from the way his voice was shaking and how he was trying to muffle his sniffs that he was crying. I didn't point it out.