Gone but not forgotten

by | Jul 19, 2012 | Creative Writing | 0 comments

As I was in the area, I went to visit my ex-mother-in-law’s grave the other day,  but search as I may, I couldn’t find it, even though I remembered exactly where it was – about twenty or thirty feet from the tree, in a direct line towards the chapel.

Sixteen years of neglect had taken their toll, meaning that the whole area was grassed over and had been mown by the cemetery staff, and not just my mother-in-law’s grave had disappeared, but also all the others in the same row of graves that I remember being there at ma-in-law’s funeral.

My ex-husband and his sister both live in the same town, so I was shocked that neither of them had taken the trouble to look after their mother’s grave, but I was even more shocked to learn that two of my ex-in-laws, who are millionaires, hadn’t even put a monument on their mother’s grave.

Then I remembered when my father-in-law died years ago, we tried to find the grave of his brother who had died a few years before, but we were told that he had been buried in a “common grave” as he had no relatives to organise a proper burial, so a few days later, with the permission of the cemetery caretaker, we erected a little wooden cross with “Uncle Raymond” burned into it on the patch of grass that was the “common grave”.

Unbelievably, at that time my ex-husband had a very rich uncle, who was a famous film director, and a very rich auntie, who was married to one of the founders of a huge high-street chain store which shall be nameless, and neither of them had the decency to fork out for their brother’s funeral, yet they had ransacked his tiny flat, taken all his possessions of any value, and left his pet pigeon and his junk behind for his landlady, and eventually us when she found a contact telephone number, to find a suitable home.

People say “gone but not forgotten”, but this particular family of non-caring, selfish, money-grabbing, rich folk, have obviously forgotten their relatives, and I wonder if they will get their just rewards when it is their turn to meet their Maker?

 

A story in six sentences – Creative Writing homework

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