This is my musing, contemplative, introspective, gruesome, emotional, humorous, rational and factual tale. Yes an all in one in many ways, although all it is really, is a simple narrative of a normal day in our lives. But a day which still evokes so much meaning and so much reflection, through a series of otherwise mundane events.

My dear wife Maria was always very fond of my parents, before their very sad demise. And I must also ashamedly admit, that it is normally she who reminds me and insists on paying them a visit at the cemetery, from time to time. To be perfectly honest, if it weren’t for her, I probably wouldn’t even go, and definitely not from a lack of love or respect towards them.

I have never been one to stand to ceremony and all this symbolism isn’t really my thing. In these matters at least, I have a very cold, solid, no-nonsense approach, whereby I try to help the living in real and practical matters, rather than revel in posthumous symbolism. However, with age and maturity, I have come to realise and respect that not everyone is the same as me, and that certain concessions must sometimes be made to accommodate other ways of doing things. So I very gladly visit my parents’ graves along with Maria from time to time, which never fails to evoke a flood of memories and ensuing tears.

We get to the Addolorata Cemetery mid morning, purchase our flowers from the friendly lady outside and solemnly make our way inside, first to my dad’s grave on the far left hand side of the grounds, then up to the very top to my mother’s. As my mum passed away only nine months after my dad, we couldn’t bury her in the same grave, which was obviously a shame, and had to put her temporarily in a communal grave.

As we walk away from my mum’s grave, Maria spots the couple of guys who were gravitating around the flower trucks and who, according to her, pick up all the purchased flowers freshly placed on the graves to take back to the trucks to resell them once again. I initially laughed at the thought, but then she explained that after a recent visit together, when she had to return again the day after to both graves with someone else, both graves were devoid of the flowers we had just purchased the day before! So you really never know do you… and with further thought on the matter, you start to think that this could be really easy money. Anyway, I cannot and am not incriminating anyone, as I really have no idea if this does happen or not. It was however rather suspicious to have seen them there and later on when we went back to our car, to see them again in the parking place. What else would they be doing following us around?

At the end of our visit we decide to pay a visit to the cemetery office to discuss the exhuming of my mother’s body and moving to the grave where my father is buried. Two years have to elapse before this may be done and this was now the case. So we speak to a polite and respectful gentleman who is very helpful and who looks up all the necessary information on the computer, completes the required paperwork for us and explains the basic procedures.

This is not something I have ever done before, so I start asking various questions about the exact proceedings, and this It where our day becomes exceptionally gruesome. It turns out that the coffin must be opened and that the remains will be pulled out and placed into a box. We are told that the body at this stage will be decayed and dismembered and that literally it will be taken out in pieces. Also that by official regulation, the remaining clothing must also somehow be pulled off the decaying remains, which is a very messy affair. We are also warned to be careful for any small body parts such as fingers which might fall off in the process and to ensure that these are picked up and placed into the box with the rest of the parts. And lastly we are also advised that the personnel doing this will then arrive at my father’s grave, make a big fuss about lifting the marble slab and start to negotiate a price for lifting it, mum’s remains threateningly in hand!!

I am neither making this up, nor believe me am I enjoying any part of it. I am neither squeamish nor usually queazy in such matters, but even the simple thought of all of this, both then and now, are admittedly making me a bit nauseous. I mean can you even start to imagine living through such a horrific ordeal concerning the body of your own mother!!!

In the two or three days which have elapsed since, I have had the occasion to discuss the matter with a few people who have been through it, and all agree that it is far from being a pleasant experience. Some tried rather poorly to play it down, others came up with a few obvious palliative measures such as staying as far as possible and not looking, but I must admit that the while ordeal sounds worse than a horrible nightmare or the worst of horror stories.

I refuse to put myself, my wife, my sister and other dear ones, through such an ordeal, unless it was totally inescapable and unavoidable. This to me is not showing respect to the memory of my poor mother, but pure desecration. I am sorry but I manage my life in the way I see fit and logic has always taken much greater priority to nonsensical custom, and if this is the savage custom other force themselves to endure, then it is their problem not mine. I have seen the finesse and respect of these people handling coffins and people’s remains and the last thing I would want to see is two senseless gorillas pulling apart what’s left of my mum’s body.

No, that is not going to be the last image we retain of my mother for the rest of our lives and there is no way it is going to happen! I am fully aware that sometime soon they will require the space for further burials and that her remains will still have to be moved, but at least we neither need to bear witness to this, we would not have instigated it prematurely, and hopefully it will also happen a bit later on when no more than simple unrecognisable bones will remain.

So I suggested an infinitely more humane and civilised private ceremony we could engage in instead. We will all meet up there on a given day, next to my mother’s grave, with a trowel and a little box. We will each in turn scoop up a little bit of soil from around her grave and place it into the small box, seal it and walk down to my father’s grave, where we will place it. We will then say a few words and reflect on their lives and wish them well.

Whether you are a believer, spiritual, or not, the whole affair of exhuming a body is totally symbolical. Whatever your belief, you know that the rotting flesh and bristled bones are nothing more than the remains of a dead body and not the person you ken and loved. So this whole affair is very obviously symbolic and no more. So symbolic for symbolic we will take an infinitely more tasteful and elegant symbolic option, rather than the gruesome one made out of horror and nightmares.

While I was talking to the cemetery gentleman through a small slot in the plastic window, separating the public part of the office from the personnel part, I immediately felt a strong draught coming through the slot. Worse still, I sensed that this air coming straight into my nose and mouth, as I placed my face close to the window to make myself heard, smelt foul and putrid. As I breathed it in, it even burned my nose and throat making it hardly bearable. I could distinctly tell that it was bad air and that it wasn’t doing me any good. I am not in any way referring to any corpses or other such morbid matters. I don’t quite believe that cadavers are actually stored within the cemetery office or anything equally ridiculous. But I can vouch that this air was bad.

I only recall one other such occasion when I was really taken aback by the foul air around me and was equally convinced that I will pay the consequences later on through the resulting malady. This was incidentally, or not, in Luxor in Egypt, in the Valley of the Kings. We had descended into one of the deep tombs through a very tiny stairwell which went down many dozens of metres in an extremely confined space, which was jam packed with thousands of pushing tourists, all breathing, sweating and farting in the same stale and unventilated air. Due to the crowds, the whole process took well over half an hour, continuously breathing the stinking air, until we finally surfaced and refused to visit any other such tombs, so we then contended ourselves to seeing them from only the outside.

And sure enough, the day after we were both extremely sick, with very bad lung infections, which restricted us to our bed, in the otherwise lovely Winter Palace Hotel in Luxor. So in this case at least, it wasn’t the dead, but very much the living, who made us sick. What it was at the Addolorata Cemetery I do not know, but I could instantly tell that it was bad noxious air that I was breathing at that window.

We gladly leave the cemetery, rather shellshocked with the news, as I plan my civilised alternative, and we head back home to Burmarrad, automatically passing via the centre of the island. So we are passing through Balzan where my parents used to live, take a quick comprehending glance at each other and make that very small detour to pass in front of their previous house, which brings back a veritable tsunami of lovely memories of their lives and of ours as part of theirs and them as part of ours.

We sold it to a lovely youngish couple who we truly love and respect. Suffice to say that around 3 months after the sale I received a phone call from them asking me to pop by when I was in the area, which left me rather perplexed. They are redoing and modernising the house, so not yet living in it, but they are usually there in the evenings doing the works. I had even forgotten about this completely, until many weeks after their call I was in the area in the early evening and decided to call them on the matter. So he confirms that he is there on his own working and I pop by. I walk in, he pulls me quietly from my arm and takes me to the false fireplace they had in the sitting room. He points at the false bottom and asks me to lift it. I wasn’t even aware that it had a false bottom until then. I pull off the dark slab of heavy granite and there lay all my mother’s jewellery and gold!

We had found a few bits and pieces here and there in the house, and as my mum loved to hide valuables in the most unlikely places, we had long resigned ourselves to the fact that most of her jewellery was lost forever. The great warmth and love and respect you feel for someone who was virtually a stranger, for showing such astounding honesty and integrity is indescribable. I remember that I just threw my arms around him and hugged him really hard. And what he told me when I finally let go was one of those eyeopening moments which will remain with me for the rest of my days.

He told me that the only reason they wanted to return the valuables to their rightful owner was because I was such a nice guy. If I weren’t they would have gladly kept them!

I always, without exception, do my very best to be a very nice person with everyone, unless I am given ample reason not to. I have been blessed all of my life with happiness and joy, I am always in a great mood and make everyone smile and laugh around me. It is the way I am, so in the end I don’t even do it purposely. I am like this even with perfect strangers who I brush shoulders with for no more than a minute or two. Even if I pop into a shop or an office, I automatically joke and laugh and bring smiles and joy to everyone there. I don’t know why I do it, but I do.

So these are people who bought my parents house and also the house where I spent a few years myself in my teens. People who paid me and my sister a lot of money, so in my book at least, how could I not be nice to these people. So immediately after signing the house contract I had invited them to lunch. I made sure that we all had a whale of a time at the notary’s for the pre-sale agreement and an even more comical one during the contract itself. We invited them to our house a couple of months later to our tenth wedding anniversary party, and why the hell not.

I wasn’t expecting anything in return. Absolutely nothing! But as the seemingly corny saying goes, you get back what you deserve in life and this is my very favourite lesson of them all in this particular domain. I was automatically a nice person with them, and this was exactly, in their own words, why they felt compelled to give us back the jewellery. What a lesson in life!

With all of these recent and fresh and fond memories in mind, we pull up in front of the house. There was a small car parked outside and visibly the works were still not finished. We knock at the door and an elderly gentleman opens and I rightly guess that he is the husband’s father, who I had been already informed, was helping them out with the works. I explain who we were and we were immediately let in and shown around. We have a lovely walk around reminiscing of old times with tears pouring down our faces and I also couldn’t help give a furtive glance to the place where the false fireplace once was.

We walked out in a bit of a daze, having been totally immersed in the memories of my parents and what usually happens when in that state, you try and do everything not to make it stop. You hang on to what memories are left, you cling onto those rare moments. So impulsively we decided to go to Santa Lucia Cafe in Attard, which was a favourite outing with my parents.

We sit there sipping a bottle of wine and nibbling at some snacks and end it all with a brandy, in honour of my father, who used to end all his visits there with such a beverage. As we drive home we discuss the various aspects of our eventful day, from the horrors of the cemetery discussion, to the tour around the metamorphosed house, a discussion we continued that evening as we eventually went to bed to sleep.

It was then that I got my first very distinctive highly irritating tickle in my throat, which never fails to forebode the onslaught of a forthcoming sickness. Sure enough I woke up the next morning with a very sore throat, coughing and sniffing, totally dizzy and sporting a high fever.

It wasn’t the curse of the pharaohs this time, but this will truly teach me to follow my gut instinct next time and to move away instantly when I next sense such foul air. So here I am on my second day of illness, but thankfully already feeling better. Nothing a few hot toddies and some nice red wine cannot cure…