THE WAKE

BEN

The moment sleep leaves me, I feel restless. I don't open my eyes immediately. I don't think. I don't want to. I can't. I can't drag myself through another day. It’s getting harder and harder.

I dreamed of my late mother-in-law. Marie-Anne had always treated me like her own son, and I… Like every son, whether by blood or not, unaccustomed to unconditional love and acceptance, too afraid there was some hideous trick behind that warmth and tenderness, resisted her – scared that someone was simply waiting to grin and say, "Fool, do you really think she loves you as you are?"

But I did love her and often pretended to be harsh to hide the tears her kindness had stirred in me. Like a wild animal that cannot believe in goodness, baring its teeth, while she quietly, calmly repeated, "There, there... easy now. It's all right."

Marie-Anne fought until the very end. As my daughter told me when she called, she had died in her arms, gripping her so tightly that red marks appeared on Milena's skin. She had always had delicate skin.

"I couldn't believe a heart could beat that hard," she said through her tears as she and the neighbour prepared Marie-Anne's body for the funeral.

"It sounded like metal clanking on metal. Every breath grew longer and longer, louder and louder," she added.

In my dream, Marie-Anne came to take me with her. She said: “I am not leaving this world without you! I need you there, son!”

That’s why I don’t want to open my eyes. I lie on my left, thinking about the life without her. My wife had passed away, my siblings are not with me anymore, my friends turned out not to be my friends…

Living is so lonely. I may have to accept I should simply leave with Marie-Anne.

I almost smile when a sharp pain penetrates my whole body and its poisonous strike blocks my chest. I try to open my eyes, but I can’t. Can’t breathe. I feel another spike of pain in my left ear. Something warm is oozing from it.

“It must be blood”, I think.

Marie-Anne comes smiling and takes my hand. I get up and go with her. At least I won’t be alone anymore…

MILENA

They’ve just called me to tell me my father is dead. I passed by his apartment a couple of hours ago, thought of dropping by and decided against it – not because we saw each other yesterday but as if some force was pushing me off the door.

His neighbours started panicking when he didn’t appear at the council meeting with the municipality officials, something about the flooded basement…

They came by to ask me to go with them or give them the keys. They had been calling him, texting him – nothing.

I sensed dread settling deep down inside me and opted to hand over the keys.

I knew, I simply knew something bad had happened. The same feeling had prevented me from dropping by earlier.

Then the call came.

I pick up my bag and head to his apartment.

The door is open. I glance into the room and see his body on the bed, back turned.

“Heart attack”, they tell me. They haven’t moved him: in the cases of death at home, we call the police and the ambulance. I call my cousin, a doctor, who works in the ER. He comes within minutes, shaken but ready to handle the situation like a pro. His own father had died in his arms the previous year.

He calls the police and tells me to go rest in my old room until they arrive, he will take care of everything else.

I ask for Dad’s phone. For the next two hours, I call everyone in his directory. I'm calm on the outside, trying not to burst on the inside. Just like his heart and the blood vessel on the left side of his head had burst. The blood trickled out of his ear and left a deep red stain on the pillow.

I scroll through his texts and feel rage. When you retire, you cease to exist for others, I’ve witnessed that in his case. So many texts asking him for “short-term loans”, never repaid, but none answering his pleas for company, just for a quick coffee. I swallow and put his phone aside.

I also call the people from my phone. I need to be focused. That stops my heart from going through spasms. It had happened too many times before this. The last survivor of our family clan died, the fourth death in a row.

I go out when the police come to take my statement. My distant cousins arrive. I leave with them to order a coffin, obituaries, the food and drinks for the wake.

I pass by Dad’s room and turn my head away. I can’t look.

A neighbour covers his body with a blanket.

“He’ll be roasting underneath”, I think since it’s a boiling hot July day.

I tighten the seams on my heart. I can’t let them rip up.

MILES

It’s 10 pm. I am sitting in my brother’s living room and looking at the coffin. It’s open casket and from where I’m sitting, the pull-out couch bed in which he had died last night, I can only see the top of his head and the bloated cheeks. His otherwise big body is even bigger since it is so hot that bloating has made him spread in all directions.

Milena is unsure whether we could nail down the coffin tomorrow. She's so strong. Once they had the body removed from the couch, she put all the sheets and pillows in the garbage bag and took it out, cleaned the room and put on clean, scented covers on the couch.

Ben is my big brother, the oldest of seven.

Big Ben.

Always took care of all of us. Our father was too busy and distant to take care of his children and our mother got sick too early, so Ben took over.

He started playing football for money and bought us clothes. He went to our PTAs. He was a popular athlete. As long people knew he was our older brother, we were protected from bullies and creeps.

My eyes fill with tears. I won’t let them spill, I won’t.

Milena glances in my direction.

“Uncle, do you need anything? You look pale.”

She is the kindest of my nieces and nephews. She has never looked down on me or mocked me in any way. She has always treated me with respect.

In two years, she has lost her grandparents, her mother and now Ben and she’s still worried about me. She sends me money and food (mostly non-perishables) whenever she can and that’s often.

That’s more than my sisters and brothers have ever done for me.

“If you’re hungry or anything, don’t ask me, just open the fridge, ok?”, she adds.

I smell alcohol. Someone is having brandy or something similar. I’m not going to succumb.

I started drinking after they had driven away my first wife, the light of my life. We got married in college but couldn’t have kids for two years. My family harassed her for months.

Big Ben was abroad but whenever he returned, he’d order them to leave us alone.

“For God’s sake, this is not some God forsaken society where you can make people divorce just because you need drama!”, he yelled.

When he left, they made her leave, my own family.

I burned out and crashed. Alcohol wasn’t the answer, but it was easy and it took only a couple of swallows to make me go right into oblivion.

I left college, got a job and while I was still crumbling inside, Mom got sick.

Ben got back, married, had two kids and drove to our town every day to take Mom to the doctor’s.

Count on Ben to do the right thing and be there for everybody.

He took me to my first rehab when Mom was still alive. Visited regularly.

I was better. Didn’t think about the missing light so much. We talked about life, books, whether I should go back to college.

His wife was genuinely nice. Supportive. Non-judgemental.

Then they decided I should get married again. As if I was some mushy old maid who needs a husband!

Mom died. My heart shattered again. I resumed drinking. This time I was a heavy hitter.

Ben took me to the rehab again.

He took me to his house in another town for a month to keep an eye on me.

He tried to protect me from our own family, our worst enemy. From myself as well.

He couldn’t do it forever. I had to go back.

I shift my body on the couch.

During rehab and especially after it, my fat cells literally exploded.

I could starve for months, and my weight and size would stay the same.

I let tears roll down my cheeks. I miss my brother. I even miss his sharp tone, hiding worry and heavy emotions.

I feel like an orphan with no future and no light in sight.

MILENA

I calmed down after the body was washed, dressed and out in the coffin. I say “the body” because that can’t be my Dad.

My Dad is not this purplish bloated mass in the biggest suit I could find.

I worry about my older uncle. He has always been a sensitive soul crushed by the selfish schemes of his family.

Technically, my family as well, but I can’t relate to their pathology. Too toxic, too arrogant and self-centred.

Uncle Miles is a sweetheart. But he has shown weakness and his brothers and sisters are like vultures smelling blood.

He and my dad are the most educated, literate people I know but they call him “foolish Miles, Miles the Moron” – the list goes on.

Imagine being born into the family who hates your guts just because you are different.

I shudder.

He’s so pale, strung out so much as if every cell in his body is shaking and is ready to explode.

“Please help yourself with anything! Do you want me to pull out the couch for you? You need to rest, you have come from afar!”

He lives six hours away from us but shakes his head in a silent “no”.

I know he has no money or decent clothes or shoes. I gave him some of Dad’s.

But the fact that he had showed up and doesn’t budge from the coffin says the unspoken sadness and repressed emotions.

He will never recover from this. This man feels Dad’s death more than me.

Dad is gone and he is here, alone and lost.

My aunt Vicky has just arrived. My glamorous drama queen with a terrible past.

VICKY

I can’t believe that’s Ben in the coffin.

My big brother, so proud of my beauty and charm. He took me out when I turned 16 and started turning men’s heads.

He tried to protect me the best he could, even involving some of his friends to treat me like a little sister but you can never know that among all those flowers, there is always a snake in the grass.

When Ben left abroad for the first time, one of his friends offered to take me home. It didn’t end well. Everybody blamed me for being “too enticing and laughing too loud”.

I just prayed to God I didn’t get pregnant. The only time God actually listened to my prayers.

Big Ben got back, beat the crap out of his “friend” and blackmailed his father into giving me a job in a department store. He stayed for a month and took me out every evening to show I was his sister, not letting me hide from mean looks and wagging tongues.

The moment he had left, trouble came in the shape of our sisters and their husbands. They came to the store, took whatever they wanted and told my coworkers I’d pay for that.

I thought they were joking. They didn’t. In the end, they wouldn’t pay and I didn’t have enough money to cover their bills for the things they had taken.

My boss turned a blind eye to their stealing but had no problem calling the police for me.

I was charged with theft and embezzlement, set up by my own family!

I had brought shame to them and, in their own twisted minds, had to pay for it.

I ended up in prison. Everybody steered clear of me.

Ben came back, this time for good, paid off the debts. Took me out of prison and to his home.

The most blissful six months before my shit hit the fan again.

Sometimes, when I think of my life, I believe God decided to unload the whole lotta shit on December 31st and it all landed on me. He started the New Year relieved and in a good mood. I was born already drowning in his load, with a hole in my heart, wailing for the life ahead of me.

The only relief was having Ben as my big brother. Now that’s gone too.

MILENA

My brave, wounded aunt Vicky. Still a beauty in her early sixties.

But her life, oh, man! If it hadn’t been for Dad, it would have been the biggest tragedy ever! Raped, set up by her own family, ended up in prison, one bad marriage in Novosibirsk (that was the farthest she could get away from their pathology), two cancers, heart surgery, artificial eye, and yet, she still flew all the way from Croatia to honour her big brother.

Big Ben.

My Dad was always there for all of them, to fix the family drama and set things straight. He opened our home to all the strays from his and Mom’s family to make them feel safe, at least for a while, help them gain strength and recharge.

Always there for others.

“Vicky, let’s have you settled”, I tell her as I refill the plates and wash the cups and glasses. Then I help her take out her artificial eye and wash the hollow on her face.

I’m not sure I’d be able to live through Vicky’s life story. Yet, she’s always putting on a brave face, all charming and smiling, God knows what sorrows and unhealed wounds are hiding beneath.

Just like Dad. One of the most melancholic souls I have ever met, yet a charming entertainer, lecturer and a sweet talker in front of the audience.

It’s almost midnight.

I send them out to beds, my aunts and their husbands to my apartment, my cousin and his wife and myself in my old room.

It’s widely believed you don’t close the door of the apartment of the deceased, but I can’t stand Dad’s colleagues talking loudly with some neighbours in the hallway.

I lock it despite their protests.

The funeral day starts long before the funeral.

At one point I see the coffin lid is higher than before and I panic. God, his intestines are going to burst! I call all the men to nail it down, later may be too late!

Then we all go to sleep.

Miles is wide awake. He’s crying silently. Vicky is hugging him. Two broken souls, crushed by their own family. The world is about to finish them off.

BEN

Well, they say the soul lingers around the body for forty days. What a load of crap! I can’t feel my body at all. I try to connect to it but to no avail.

I see Miles. My poor brother. He looks as if he’s barely holding onto the seams of his physical body. I know how much he’s hurting. I know he still misses his light. He was such a handsome young man, full of ideals and ideas, his head in the clouds, an engineer with a heart filled with poetry, the kindest person I’ve ever known.

Not enough that the world crushes the kind ones but your own family!

And Vicky, beautiful, gold-hearted, generous Vicky!

No surprise those two decided to stay by my coffin.

Both still healing and recovering from the traumas inflicted by their own.

I hear Milena talking to them.

I know she sees me now as an assignment, a funeral to be done and over with.

For her, my body is not Dad, just the remains of someone she loves and will miss deeply in the years to come.

It was a bit comical when she saw the lid slowly going up.

“Guys, we have a crisis!”, she screamed.

“Nail that thing down, I can’t deal with his intestines splattered on the ceiling!”

There was some laughter. Only Miles seemed to be glued to the couch, white as a sheet and trembling inside.

Poor Miles! Vicky has had her surgeries, but his cancer is yet to come. He is going to die all alone, begging people to come inside and help him but they’ll turn their heads away. By the time he’s dead, his sons will have ripped him off and taken everything he has.

My other brother will be in a coma for seven years. He hasn’t arrived yet. He’ll be selling jokes like crazy, as usual, but shortly after my funeral, he’ll have a massive stroke and vegetate until the very end.

That’s the way it goes. Karma is a bitch.

I just hope Milena has broken the cycle and will find a good man who will protect and cherish her.

Surely not as in Flannery O’Connor’s story “A good man is hard to find”.

My wife’s soul has just touched mine.

Time to go.

Curtain down.

Exit.