My grandmother must have been so lonely once I left, and I had no idea.

Gone for days, blank behind the eyes, busying herself with the funeral arrangements and taking care of me.

I would mostly just sit and watch her, unaware of what to do, unable to understand her loss, physically present, but essentially useless.

Company. Another human being in the house that used to have a husband.

And I guess I was the eight-year-old stand-in husband. Standing in at my mother’s instruction. For that week at least.

So, we'd watch her stories together, she'd cook a hot lunch, dinner was toast or cereal, she'd answer calls about flowers and coffins and payments.

Those days were a blur for me, but no doubt trudging along for her.

Dragging and painful.

I tried to do my part. Washed the dishes, helped with hanging out clothing and linens, tried not to get in the way as best I could.

A child and a grandmother. A few days together. A funeral at the end.

That day was the strangest of all.

An early morning.

Sat up at the dining table. Preparing sandwiches, cheese, and biscuits, for the wake. The sun barely risen, the house absolutely freezing, my young body weary at the ungodly hour, just the two of us.

A car ride with my cousins.

My grandmother far quieter than she’d been these past few days. Nothing else to plan, no more chores with some eight-year-old asking questions and making jokes. Just a car ride to bury her husband.

A modern church.

One with all that new architecture, like a slick town hall, none of those bleeding paintings of Jesus; just beige walls, large windows, and a podium on a stage, behind a dead man in a box.

My mother had brought something for me to wear, I didn't like it, but it seemed silly to complain. It wasn’t my husband in that box, so maybe I should just do what I’m told, and not make this day any worse.

My cousin who drove us, the one who had twenty years on me, spoke about the man we were all here to say goodbye to. Wearing a tan suit and a white shirt, no tie, like a beach-bound James Bond. He mentioned the light colour was for my grandfather, who stated on many occasions, that he hated people wearing black to funerals.

I looked down to my royal blue and cream ensemble, and I liked it a little more.

There were so many faces I didn't know, people I never met who swore they knew me as a baby, and wanted to bask in the fact I was a baby no longer.

Most of them didn't attend the wake, they only came for the ceremony. They didn't come back to my grandmother's house, where she unwrapped the sandwiches, cheese, and biscuits, we’d prepared that earlier that morning, and lay them out on her coffee table.

It was cramped in her house; the structure wasn't built for even the small number of immediate family who had made their way to the wake.

So many of them said the same phrases, like dialogue from a script I’d never read, while looking at me with a strange expression I didn't understand.

In return, I nodded, and feigned a small smile, hoping the interaction would be over soon. It worked with every one of them.

As the mid-morning turned to afternoon, my mother informed me I'd be going home with her today, and I should pack my things.

And I went home, went back to school, went back to what I knew as normal, but my grandmother had nothing of the sort to return to.

I was only a child then, not really old enough to understand much of that week, but when I look back on that particular day now, I think only of that night.

My grandmother's night.

An old woman watching her stories alone, cleaning dishes alone, crawling into bed alone.