Ordinary Wonder Tales by Emily Urquhart

Author:Emily Urquhart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Biblioasis
Published: 2022-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

My brother’s funeral was on an unusually cold day in September 2001. We gathered at the cemetery at noon. Fat raindrops fell from the sky, and the mist cast a grey pall across the tombstones. There was a giant-size undertaker in black tails, arms outstretched as if he were gathering the rain from the sky, who waved the funeral procession toward him. Slow-moving cars snaked over the bumpy gravel road that cut through the graveyard. At the gravesite there was a black canopy erected over our heads and a stretch of burlap beneath us. I stood with my surviving siblings and my parents around a small rectangular hole, not much larger than a shoebox, that had been cut neatly from the earth at our feet. It was tiny, as if we were burying a dead bird we’d found in the yard rather than the cremated remains of my brother.

Afterward, we met in a church basement with grey indoor-outdoor carpet. People ate sandwiches held together by toothpicks and drank bitter coffee in Styrofoam cups. We were collectively damp from the rain. Wet overcoats hung in the corner, and we all had mud on the soles of our shoes. The women wore black dresses; the men, dark suits. I stood in one corner of the basement holding a paper plate piled with food that I didn’t touch. People lined up to speak with me, reintroducing themselves, some taking me into their arms. After offering condolences, my mother’s cousin wandered into small talk. She asked me what street I lived on in Toronto. I swallowed and looked down. I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t tell her. I breathed in, my heart raced, and blood rushed to my head. I felt like I might be sick. I couldn’t recall my address. I could envision my front door and the adjacent park, but the street name, no matter how hard I tried, escaped me. “I just can’t remember,” I told her.

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