Short Story

Bisnonna*

Nancy's Notes 🖊️🎶

Written for The Unicorn Challenge where we are
asked to get creative in 250 words or less using
the photo below as inspiration. Here is my story.

© Ayr/Gray

The ambience in our house was different today, quietly busy as delivery men and acquaintances paying their respects came and went. My father and mother’s uncles directed the traffic of floral deliveries and positioned the many arrangements throughout the parlor. My mother and her aunts labored in the kitchen like silent worker bees preparing trays of food for the funeral dinner tomorrow.

We children sat meekly on the two enormous matching sofas along the side walls, eyes downcast, confused and uncharacteristically restrained. Occasionally we would glance toward the elevated casket in the center of the room and quickly look away. At 6:00 we were whisked off to the dining room where we wordlessly ate our evening meal, then returned to the parlor to continue our vigil.

There seemed to be a never-ending flow of people, a soft parade of mourners entering our house. Veiled women dabbed their eyes and men removed their hats, heads bowed. This stream flowed seamlessly from 2:00 in the afternoon until 9:30 that evening, many people lingering to reflect while caressing their rosary beads. A priest arrived shortly after 9:30; he spoke softly in our native Sicilian dialect, offering prayers and words of consolation. When he was finished, everyone except my mother’s aunts and uncles departed. My little cousins, some no longer able to stay awake, were carried home and my sister and I were shooed off to our bedroom upstairs.

It had been a long and sorrowful day. My great-grandmother, the family matriarch, had died.

NAR©2024
250 Words

*Bisnonna is the Sicilian word for “great-grandmother”.

Author’s Note: I was nine years old when my great-grandmother died. Much of that day is etched in my mind; in particular, I remember being unable to sleep that night knowing there was a dead body in a coffin downstairs in my parlor. Never ever will I forget the cold and waxy feel of my bisnonna’s skin on my lips as I, along with all the other children, lined up to place a kiss on her forehead … not something we did willingly.

The Unicorn Challenge-13/09/24

This is “Paint It Black” by the Rolling Stones

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54 thoughts on “Bisnonna*”

  4. the best thing about the blogosphere?

    real people offering a view into a world/life/time that is unique to them but will almost always encourage recognition*

    we (collectively) have, courtesy of technology, access to more libraries, diaries, used-book stores and secret memories than we can ever exhaust.

    how cool is that?

    *if only in contrast to a far different one

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  5. I’m a big fan of your story/memoir, Nancy, but not of the tradition you describe so beautifully.

    But I don’t presume to inflict my views on other cultures, it’s hard enough living in mainland France!

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    1. Thank you, CE. I am not a fan either. As a child I did as I was told but as a teenager, I rebelled against many of those archaic traditions. I certainly never taught them to my own children. I’m sure some of my cousins spent hours on the psychiatrist’s couch because of that tradition.

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        1. Speaking of stories, I was embarrassed to tell you that I lost my copy of Her Coastal Cottage (I don’t use Kindle) and couldn’t find it anywhere …. until today! Bill was going through a box of Colette’s books which we keep in our guest room and there it was, mixed in among her books! I have no idea how it got in there although I’m willing to bet sticky little fingers were involved! What a nice surprise during my recovery! Now I can pick up where I left off. 😊

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          1. That is a fun find! I would have been happy to send you another, but I understand. I am with you on the paperback – eBooks have benefits (less space/great for travel/etc.) but my preference is to hold the book. The collections I’ve ordered from our creative community have been paperbacks. 👍🏻 Thank you for ordering mine! It is does retain the essence and style of poetry, which is where it began. My recent novella, born from flash fiction, has a linear literary fiction style, with steamy sex. ❤️‍🔥🪭😄

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  7. wow what vivid imagery of a very chilling time for you as a child, Nancy and of your grandmother no less. I can imagine how tough that was for you. When my king charles, lady died, I couldn’t bring myself to bury her and had a shrine in the family room with her in the middle for 4 days and family would come to say goodbye but I’m sure that would be morbid if my kids were young. 💓💓

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    1. We all handle death differently, Cindy; there is no right or wrong way to grieve. I have friends who want a huge party when they die with lots of laughs and good times and other who want neither wake nor funeral for the family.

      My life as a child was a very different time. Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Cindy. ♡♡

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  8. I was with my Dad when he passed away in 1996, but was almost 300 miles away when my Mum died in 2018. I paid my last respects to her in the Chapel of Rest the day of the funeral, having travelled down the night before as a friend was looking after Maggie for us. I kissed her goodbye and was surprised at how cold she was, but she was still my Mum. I tucked a small note under the sheet, laid four red roses around her, and dropped in a couple of dog biscuits from Maggie. When relatives died when I was a child, we weren’t expected to say our goodbyes, and the first funeral I attended was that of my grandfather in 1974.

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    1. It was nothing I wanted to do, that’s for sure, but I was 9 years old … too young to go against my family’s customs but old enough to remember how much I disliked it. I’m grateful I grew up with my head on straight, unlike some female cousins who had real issues later in life.

      Psychiatrists have a field day with stuff like this.

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      1. I don’t doubt that for a second. And of course you couldn’t. Shudder! Yeah, I hear you. Some stay “stuck in the village mentality”.

        And they do! Keeps ’em in business!

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  10. You really capture the feelings of the child, your feelings, in this, Nancy.
    The discomfort, knowing what has happened but not understanding, being overawed by it all.
    And you had to sit through the whole vigil – I don’t know, maybe that makes death more familiar, rather than my own experience which was of being kept away.
    Your story has the gift of inviting my own memories back, and I’ve spent a few quiet moments with them.
    But as for kissing the body – I was taken in to see my Granpa’s body and told to kiss him goodbye – I had hysterics on the spot .

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    1. Thanks, Jenne. I think it’s a good thing for children to grow up in an environment where death is looked on as another part of life instead of being hidden away from it and to grow up in fear. We didn’t dare have hysterics; our parents would have been humiliated and that’s not how we did things. I was a strong willed kid, however, and in another few years I didn’t do anything I didn’t want to. My sister toed the line but my parents eventually threw in the towel where I was concerned!

      Thanks for sharing these great thoughts today.

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  11. It was a different time that’s for sure. My mom told me the viewing was important part of the grief process, and in some ways she might have been right, it certainly is a reality check. But, we still grieve and feel the loss and eventually accept in on some level even if all we see is an urn of ashes.

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    1. That’s an interesting point, D. I never saw an urn with ashes or even a closed casket until I was an adult. My parents dragged us to every funeral and they were all up close and personal. However, I raised my children very differently from the way I was raised.

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        1. My brother-in-law’s coffin was open for the immediate family to say their goodbyes, then it was closed for the remainder of the wake. He was wearing his favorite City Island t shirt, jeans and a shark tooth necklace. A fishing rod which my husband gave him for his birthday was leaning against the coffin. 😔

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  15. A sad memory, but I think perhaps one you treasure. (Perhaps?) We’re squeamish about death in western culture, and I’m coming to the opinion that we should be teaching our children to accept it as a natural thing, sad and solemn, yes, but as natural as birth. I don’t know – just pondering really. Your memoir here goes right to the heart. Beautifully recalled and recreated. I love the child’s perspective. You’ve made it so convincing and engaging.

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    1. You have a gift, Margaret; I cherish every word you write in your comments. Thank you!

      Treasure? Perhaps. I think it’s important and meaningful for us to preserve these family memories, no matter how uncomfortable, i.e., kissing bisnonna’s forehead. I was being kind in my story; this was something we children were forced to do. It was a sign of respect. Traumatizing to some, for sure.

      I agree with you about teaching our children to accept death as a sad but natural life progression. I believe it’s important that they look at death as a rebirth … otherwise, what is the point? And we must not force them to kiss dead people. It’s never a good memory.

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      1. Oh thank you for saying that, Nancy. That’s so nice.

        Maybe I wasn’t quite correct in my assumption that you treasure this memory. I totally get it that kissing the dead person would have been over the top for a child. The ‘kindness’ you’ve used to tell your story struck me as you intended, I think. The culture we spring from, and the traditions that are part of that, make us who we are, in part, even if as you say, we veer away from them in our later lives. I’d be like you, and choose to continue only the bits I believed in, and leave the rest as memories.

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