Saturday, April 21

 

 

We got up reasonably early and refreshed. I felt no effects from my day of travelling and set about doing the Saturday morning house-cleaning with gusto. After breakfast Irma went shopping while I did some vacuum-cleaning and the cat did some wandering about outside.

At about 14:30 we collected Naa from her apartment and drove to Kulosaari Kukkaa for some flowers. We then drove to Kamppi to collect Irma’s mother. I have Juusi’s ashes on my lap in a wooden urn throughout this.

We get to Hietaniemi Cemetery where Marja, Kim and Daria, Arto, Susanne and Vanessa, and Juusi’s sister Lisa all join us. We hold a short ceremony in which Leena reads, Lisa sings, and Irma speaks. Finally Irma lowers the urn into a hole that a man has dug in the corner of the family plot. He covers it with sand and fills the hole in again. We stand and look and take some photographs. I take a photograph looking away from the service down the line of graves towards the sea.

We will all return to Kamppi for tea and cakes. This will prove a chaotic affair as everyone attempts to organise it at the same time. Irma’s mother and Liisa will chuckle about too many cooks and eventually people will sit around the table, drink tea and eat biscuits and cakes. Lisa will leave, and then we will; leaving Arto and Kim loudly talking about cycling and eating their way through the cakes.

We will drop Naa at home on the way back and then let Sunshine out for an evening outing.

We will attempt to watch Crash, written and directed by by Paul Haggis, but it will prove too demanding for the mood we find ourselves in. It has a series of interlocking stories that weave around each other in a way that reminds me of Nashville, and we cannot discipline ourselves to pay enough attention. We will switch channels and start to watch Ben Stiller starring as Walter Mitty. This will proceed slowly enough but will rapidly become too irritating to watch. At the point when Sean Penn appears in an over the top performance as an eccentric photographer, we will decide to give up, turn the television off, and talk.

We will do this for a bit and then go to bed.