Two Stories: Tell the Birds and Death in the Funeral Parlour 

Asha Rajan

Tell the Birds

My mother lies dying. She squeezes my hand, searches my face, elicits my promise. She doesn’t concern herself with my brother and his failing marriage or me and my already failed one. But the birds; they’ll be bereft. 

So will I. I don’t tell her this. 

My mother is a hard woman to love, but I love her anyway. A meagre childhood followed by a utilitarian marriage forged her, ensconced her in a hard outer shell. My brother long ago gave up on finding openings to the softness at her core, but I nurture fledgling hope on battered wings.  

The birds, a repeated refrain through her life, provide us glimpses of a gentle heart. Around them she is unguarded, most herself. She calls them, feeds them, leaves small scraps of material for their nest-building, trades family gossip with them. She shares her most guarded thoughts, her deepest emotions with them. She connects with them in ways she never can with us; her children. 

They come when I call. I give them apple and watermelon on birthdays - theirs and mine.  

I don’t ask how she knows their birthdays. 

Who’ll feed them? Where will they find treasures for their nests? 

I coo reassurances, but she bats them impatiently away. They are the wrong pitch. 

They don't know how to be in the world without me. 

Neither do I. I don’t tell her this either. 

Tell the birds.  

The whisper of her final breath echoes in my ears. 

After her funeral, after the mob of sombre-clothed mourners registering their presence to god and posterity leaves, after my brother and his line-lipped soon-to-be-ex-wife drag their fractious children to the car, after the dolorous funeral directors press their earnest eyebrows together, press my hands in consolation, whisper their commiserations, and present me the final bill, I drive to my mother's house. 

I open the front door to the smell of suppurating skin, of rancid oil and stale spices. The house is dark, cold, unwelcoming; a brick-and-mortar manifestation of my mother. I fumble my way to the kitchen table wondering when the curtains were last opened, when the sun last broke in. I worry what microbes have flourished in the dank, and what monsters still lurk in the shadows. I flick open the nearest curtain, throw open the window, watch dust motes float languidly in the light.  

In the small kitchenette, veneered by sticky grease and layers of grime, I feel under the sink for the box of bird seed. I know without looking that it is there. It has always been there. My hand knocks the box, sets it hissing a warning, a threat. I grab it, open the glass door that leads to the patio, shake the box in a rattling call and spread seed in a wide arc around me. I imagine myself O-Lan, the main character from my mother's favourite novel, sowing the land.  

The birds come. One at a time at first, then in groups of four and five until the patio is covered in clouds of cooing, cawing, strutting creatures. I watch transfixed as they press politely past each other to scoop grains into their beaks and down their gullets. They don't fight. My mother taught them, as she taught my brother and me, the futility of it. 

‘She's gone,’ I tell them, sitting heavily on a plastic chair with uneven legs that wobbles unsteadily under my weight. They strut and coo and caw. 

— —

Death in the Funeral Parlour 

‘You’re early,’ the mortician said as Death settled herself on a nearby pew. Her appearance was nothing new. He had met her many times in the course of his work. 

‘The wind brought me whispers of rumours and tumours.’ Setting down her staff, she smoothed her ragged cloak with bony hands. The mortician stepped down from the dais, away from the coffin. 

‘I’ve just finished the final touches, applied the makeup that makes living of the dead. Maybe you could sit a while? I have tea in my thermos and questions in my heart.’ The mortician pulled a small square red bandana from his trouser pocket, tenderly unfolded it to full size, held it to his cheek and then his nose. A fit of coughing wracked his thin frame. The mortician closed his eyes, inhaled slowly, deeply. 

‘It was my Ruby’s.’ He held the bandana gently in his cupped hands, as if it were an injured bird. ‘She wore it in her hair. Red; for the colour of the blood in our hearts, she said.’ 

Death tilted her head but said nothing.  

‘It’s been ten years, but it could have been a day. It’s been no time at all since she died. No time, and forever. I don’t know how I’ve lived so long without her.’ He folded the bandana along its well-worn creases, tucked it deep into his trouser pocket, and gave the outside of the pocket a reassuring pat. 

Death pointed a long, slender finger towards the coffin. 

‘Mrs Temple. Grace.’ The mortician donned his formal, lugubrious voice – the one he reserved for the family of the deceased. ‘Car crash. Drunk driver. A terrible shame. But some comfort in a life well-lived and a wonderful family to carry on her legacy.’ 

‘Do you think such platitudes bring mourners comfort?’ Death asked, turning her gaze to him. 

‘I… I’ve never really thought about it. It’s what I was taught when I first started in this business.’ His words trail into silence. 

‘Where will she go? Heaven or hell, I mean.’ The mortician sat heavily down on the end of the pew across the aisle from Death. His joints ached. He was tired. His breath was laboured and often interrupted by bouts of coughing. 

‘I don’t know. My job is to escort souls to the edge of the river. Where the ferryman takes them from there is beyond my pay grade.’ 

‘Have you never wondered?’ The mortician shifted against the hard wooden pew, turned so his body was twisted to face Death. 

‘I… I’ve never really thought about it. It’s what I was taught when I first started in this business. I guess we’re the same in that sense,’ Death chuckled. 

The hairs on the mortician's arms stood to attention at the sound of Death’s laugh. Any warmth in the air instantly disappeared. 

‘I’ve taken up too much of your time already,’ said the mortician rising from his seat. ‘I should let you get on with your task.’ The mortician stepped back, ushered Death towards the coffin, cast his eyes respectfully down. 

Slowly, sadly, Death shook her head.  

‘Brian,’ she said softly, taking up her staff and proffering her scroll of names to him. It was the first time she’d called him by name. It caught him off-guard. 

‘How did you—? But of course you know my name.’ The mortician’s surprise dissolved into another fit of coughing. 

Death pointed first to her own chest and then to his. ‘Your cough. The cigarettes you’ve smoked since you were 15. They’ve grown dark blooms in your lungs. Perhaps if you’d kept your doctor’s appointments after your Ruby came with me things might have been different. Perhaps this was always meant to be. This too is beyond my pay grade.’ 

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘There are people to notify, arrangements to make. I’m not ready.’ 

‘Nobody ever is,’ said Death. ‘Still, it’s time.’  

Death pounded her staff firmly on the ground three times. At the first strike, a spark of light appeared suspended in mid-air in the centre of the aisle. At the second, the spark fizzed and shimmered, flowering like a firework. At the third strike, the spark grew into a portal, tall and wide enough to fit both the mortician and Death. She held out a skeletal hand for his, warm and plump, and led him towards the light.