Tonight’s prompt involved a picture taken by a member while a tourist in (1970s?) Greece a long time ago (Thanks, Laura!) of an ossuary. In Europe in general, while customs vary by country, with thousands of years of human habitation the reality is that graves are not permanent. A person who is interred in a cemetery is given a certain amount of time (x years) and then their remains are disinterred, their bones collected, and neatly stacked alongside others in an ossuary. Some medieval ossuaries were quite artistic in how they arranged bones, and are tourist sites today. This month’s prompt was inspired by today being All Souls’ Day.
So, the prompt: Write a story or description about how the dead are honored. I’m summarizing what was a page-long prompt, but you get the idea. So, my take:
The iron gate groaned, shuddered, clanked a few times, then finally gave way and swung open. An older man wearing jeans, a cardigan, and a frumpy jacket stepped cautiously into the darkness. He glanced back towards the light for a moment but a finger pointed him onward. He stepped forward.
He used the light from his phone to find his way to the far wall, where he encountered the shelves filled with rows upon rows of skulls. He searched back and forth before stopping before one.
“Hello, Mabel,” he muttered into the darkness.
“I’m over here, dumbass!” intoned a voice from somewhere to his right.
He straightened himself up and shuffled carefully towards the source of the voice. He came to a halt with recognition.
“Of course you are, Dear. Sorry.”
“So what do you want?” she barked at him.
“It’s All Souls’ Day, and I’m here to honor you and your memory,” he responded matter-of-factly.
“Oh, please!” she sputtered. “You couldn’t even stand me when I was alive.”
“That’s not true,” he answered.
“You hated my cooking!” she growled.
“Well, yes, your casseroles were pretty bad.”
“And you disdained my beloved Pepé, my gorgeous little chihuahua!”
“That thing used to pee in my slippers all the time.” He struggled to manage his tone.
“And I saw how you cringed every time my mother visited,” she continued in a shrill voice.
“It’s true!” came another, older feminine voice from somewhere else in the dark.
“Well, OK, but she would constantly ask you in front of me why you didn’t marry that Alfonzo guy from your high school instead.”
She sighed, verging on tears.
“What do you want, Frank? Why do you bother coming here every year?”
He laid a single rose down in front of her skull.
“Because despite it all, I still love you,” he answered.
He turned around, and headed back towards the light. Just as he crossed the threshold, he heard from behind,
“Thank you.”
