The sick man

I could not understand why people would go to the cemetery. I know you need to go when you bury a friend or a relative that was dear to you that has died. But I could not understand why you should go there again for them. My parents said you go to celebrate their memory, but I have never seen anybody happy in a cemetery, like there are no happy memories. There are only sad people. Often they are so sad that they are crying.

Sometimes we go there for my grandparents. I have not known them for too long. We have not been good friends, and I do not miss them. I have never felt sad there. Maybe because I am too little now and I do not have friends that have died. But I still do not like to go there, there is not much to do for a child in the cemetery. I do not like looking at people, they seem caught in ugly thoughts and have sad faces. And I am not allowed to play with other children. I asked why but I did not receive an answer. Sometimes, when there is a funeral, there are many people and many flowers. I have never seen a dead person, I wonder if they are like in the movies that I had watched on television when my parents were not at home. But I am not tall enough to see in the coffin. Once I asked my father if he could lift me on his shoulders so that I could look, but he said no, it was not polite to do that. Then he smiled at me but I think that he was upset and I did not ask why. And I have not asked him again since then.
To pass the time, I like to look at the small monuments. Some have pictures of people and poems or stories that I do not understand. I don't know how to read very well yet, but every time I can get more words. However, I still do not understand what the poems mean. Other monuments have small candles but they do not smell nice like the candles we have at home when there are guests. And there are some that have statues of angels. I like the angels, but even they seem to be sad like the people walking among them. For me the good thing about the cemetery is that often after we return home other people come and visit us, and we have cakes.

One day something strange happened near a place where people go to buy candles and flowers for the monuments. People gathered around an old man I had seen before. This time he was different from the past. His hands were shaking, and then his head and entire body started, too. Another man went to him and helped him to sit down. Then he sat down himself and held the old man's head. Soon the old man started to tremble very badly and the other man held him very tightly, almost like he was trying to hurt him. I do not know what happened after that, somebody pulled me from there. Everybody seemed to be angry at me, although I had not done anything bad. Later that day my father told me that old man was very sick. He suffered from a disease that was called epilepsy, and people with this sickness start to tremble very badly when they have a crisis, and this was what had happened earlier. The other man that held him did not mean any harm, he was just taking care that the old man would not hurt his head badly while he was sick.

A few weeks later I saw again the old man in the cemetery, he seemed to be healthy again. My parents were busy arranging some flowers and I sneaked to him and asked him if he was feeling well. He looked at me and after some time he smiled and he said that he was all right and asked if I had seen him when he was sick. He apologized if he had scared me. He said used to come often to the cemetery to visit his wife. He remained alone after she had passed away and sometimes he would become sick while remembering her. Then he told me a child should not know about such things and that I should go back to the people I had come with before they'd get worried.

But on the way home I did think of him. He would have nobody to take care of him if he ever got sick at home, and he could get hurt badly. From that day, I felt very sad whenever I was in a cemetery because there are people like the old man for whom this is a better place than their house.

A special evening

One day mother didn't come home. Two sisters and their little brother waited patiently at first and then impatiently for her but she never came. They were alone in the house, their father had left two years before that. In their short lives that was such a long time and they'd forgotten him completely.
The only remaining family was a lady who stayed with them for a few days when mother stopped coming home and who eventually sent them to live with grandpa. She said he was their daddy's daddy and that it were better for them to go and live with him rather than being separated and living with foster parents. They did not understand what that meant, but they were glad to stay together.

She put them on a bus that took them to grandpa's village. They didn't know anything about him, they hadn't even known they had a one; mother had never mentioned him. But he was very nice; he waited for them at the station, took them to his house and they all lived together since. There was not too much room for all of them but they didn't have many things anyway, and neither did grandpa. They only had some clothes from home, and a few more from that nice lady. And a puppet, too, she gave it to the little boy before they got on the bus and said was sorry she could not afford to give them more. But they liked it a lot, they hadn't had other toys before.

Among the few things in grandpa's house there was a big painting on a wall, with some trees in it, like the trees in the garden. And among the trees there were two large animals. They had yellow fur and black stripes. The children didn't know what those animals were. The children were little and did not know many things. The eldest sister was not even old enough to go to school yet. And the boy hadn't even started talking yet, he could not say thank you to the nice lady for the puppet.

Not much has changed for the children since they arrived at grandpa's place, but in his house there were no loud noises from the street or from the building like it used to happen at home, and they could sleep at night without anything waking them up. And here they had grandpa's dog, too. The children liked him a lot, he was big and would take care of them when grandpa was at work. They didn't get to see grandpa much, but they had not seen mommy much when they lived with her, either. During the day she was at work, and during the nights when she was at home with them she used to fall asleep right after dinner or even before she was done eating.
At least grandpa came home every evening and played with them, but he was very tired, too, and would fall asleep quickly. The dog was there to keep them company all day long, though. And at night they had the small puppet to play with, too. The dog was not allowed to stay inside the house.

One day during winter grandpa came home earlier. The children did not have many warm clothes to play in the snow and had to stay inside. They were glad to see him, there was not much to do because the puppet had broken some time ago. He took the children and sat them at the table. Then he lit a candle under a small painting on the wall. It was a painting of a sad woman and her little baby. The children did not know who that woman was, but their mother had a picture just like that at home, too.
Grandpa told them he came home earlier because they would celebrate a very special day.
During dinner one of the girls asked grandpa what were the large animals in the big painting and he said they were tigers. The girl asked what a tiger was and where they lived. Grandpa said they lived in Africa and in India. She then asked if that was far and if they would eat their dog. He smiled and said they lived far and their dog was safe. The girl carried on and said she would like to go and play with the tiger one day.
Grandpa went to his bag and took out a small cake to celebrate that special day. The children were delighted; it had been a very long time since they had had cake or spent so much time with grandpa.

Grandpa smiled with them, but he was sad. He was sad because he could not give his children a new puppet for that special winter day. And he was sad thinking the children would never travel far enough to see a tiger.