Aftermath, Part Two

June was almost here and the weather was so warm that it felt like summer already. Well, if you forgot the fact that it was still May, it was all summer. The weekend was coming and I intended to enjoy it as much as I could with Oona. I wasn’t quite sure yet what we would do, but I wanted it to be something nice and that would also give Minna some time off and an opportunity to visit her parents. Besides that, she would be finishing her children’s teacher studies. Something that didn’t seem too likely a year and a half ago.

The last few weeks, Minna and I had grown closer and she didn’t call me Mr. Aho anymore. Unless she was angry with me. When that happened the first time, I didn’t know what to think, but afterwards I smiled at the memory. It had felt so normal. There hadn’t been that many normal things in my life lately, so one angry nanny was something quite nice. However, there were lines that I would never cross. Hugging her and a kiss on her cheek would be as far as I would go, even if her parents might hope for something more - now. In the beginning, they had not been too happy with the arrangement that she occasionally spent a night with Oona and me. In her own room. With a lock on the door.

I was still going through some practical things regarding the work I wanted to get done before the weekend when my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number and neither did the software in my phone connect it to any of the phone books that I had access to.

“Mikael Aho.”

“Mr. Aho, this is the head nurse at Aavanen calling. I’m sorry to inform you that your wife passed away this morning. It seems that she had another stroke sometime during the night and during the morning her body just gave away when we tried to revive her. I’m sorry.”

I was silent for the moment the fact took to register in my mind. Elisa was dead and I should have felt grief. Should have. I just couldn’t.

“I see ... what do I need to do now?”

“Nothing right now, Mr. Aho, but sometime soon you’d need to contact a funeral parlor that can then agree with us about the removal. We have our own doctor who will determine the cause of death, but in your wife’s case there’ll probably be no delays. Like I said, I’m sorry about your loss.”

“No, thank you and please give my thanks to all your people for all the work you did during the years. I’ll make sure that somebody will contact you.”

“We were only doing our job, Mr. Aho. Bye for now.”

“Bye.”

I put my phone back in my pocket while I tried to process what had happened. I looked around, but Oona was safely playing with her dolls in her room. I still needed to tell her the news, but it probably wouldn’t make much difference to her, since she knew her mother only from photos.

I pushed all the thoughts about my work into the background and concentrated on the things I needed to do now. Both Elisa’s and my parents and been old when we were born and they both had died almost immediately after our wedding. I’d had to take care most of the arrangements back then. But that had been a different time and situation and the memories of those things had been washed away with time. So, instead of trusting my memory, I decided to search the Internet for instructions. Soon I wanted to whine, because I was overloaded both with useful and useless information.

Two hours later I had gotten things rolling, but I wasn’t exactly happy: I had been Elisa’s trustee all the time, once it seemed that her situation would be permanent and I had been able to take care of everything in her name. However, that authority ended immediately on her death and our bank suggested all kinds of arrangements for how I should take care of her bills now. Each one of them was more complicated and expensive than the other - not that the money would have mattered here. I just couldn’t see a reason why they should benefit from her death.

When I broke the news to Oona, she was sad for a moment, even if she didn’t really understand the reason. Then we looked together at some old photos of her mother - and that was it. For Oona. Like I said, she hadn’t ever seen Elisain the flesh. There had been no way that I would have allowed her to see that empty look in Elisa’s eyes.

That evening when I went to sleep I felt a bit odd. Or, I felt odd because I didn’t feel much different than I had felt before. Oona had listened to me and asked a few questions during the evening and then she was satisfied. There would be a funeral soon and we’d need to attend - that was about it. Oh, she’d need a new nice dress for the funeral. Once I had promised that we’d go shopping for it the next day, she had been almost giddy.

During the last year, Minna had taken care most of the clothes shopping with Oona, but I wasn’t totally unprepared for these kinds of trips. After all, I had managed to keep Oona decently clothed for some years - simply by letting some salesperson, usually a woman - and Oona, do most of the negotiating. Since that method had turned out to be working before, I decided to try it again. If anything, it should be even easier now when Oona was more than a year older and quite capable to explain what she liked.

Once I had picked a shop with a decent-looking collection of children’s clothes I turned towards an approaching saleswoman.

“Good morning. I wonder if you could help us to find some nice dress for my daughter, Oona. I’m certain that she can tell you, all by herself, what she likes and what she doesn’t like.”

The woman in her thirties smiled and turned towards Oona. “So, young lady. Do you have some nice party coming for which you need that dress?”

I saw it coming, but I was way too late.

“Yes, I must look nice at my mum’s funeral.”

That was said in a clear, happy voice of a six-year old girl. Like it was something that could happen every day. I saw how the look on the face of the saleswoman changed from surprised to shocked and without any warning she ran away from us. I got a feeling that this shopping trip wasn’t going to be as easy as I had thought. We got Oona her dress, but I wouldn’t call our trip a real success. My initial reaction in that shop had been that we should get away from that shop and start using another shopping mall. Instead, I had walked to the clerks and tried to explain the situation. But there was really no way to explain how it had been. That you just couldn’t take your girl to see her brain-dead mother whose body had refused to die. Luckily one of the older women had come to help us. Once Oona saw herself on the mirror, the woman had spoken to me in a soft voice.

“I know what you meant back there ... my father had Alzheimer’s and towards the end there were many moments when the look in his eyes was something I wouldn’t like to remember.”

I had just nodded at her. I would have liked to remember Elisa the way she was when we met. I really would.

That evening I found myself on the sofa looking at a movie with Oona eating some popcorn. Somehow I managed to act normally and get Oona to sleep before I broke down.

I had cried for Elisa years ago, first when she had been kidnapped and later, when she had been released and had her accident, but after that, it had been years when I hadn’t shed a single tear. Now, this night they just kept on coming and I had no way to stop them, even if I didn’t really know why I cried.