All In Your Head

It’s all in your head. The last words I had ever spoken to her were just that. I

was floundering in the mud of grief while my beloved Grandma burned and cooled, all

by herself in the cremation chamber. My beloved Grandma, who would remark in her

sweet voice when I was a little girl: we are special and alike. Out of the whole family,

only you and I were not born twins. Grandma shrieked several times a day that a baby

was crying as her death approached. My regret, however, had to stop when the funeral

director came out, looking somewhat disturbed. He led me inside where remnants of

Grandma lay. “I had to ask you, ma’am, whether you would like to bury, this... part

with your late grandmother.” At first, I thought he was pointing at Grandma’s neckbone,

but I saw a figure a bit larger than my thumb. It was small yet had the full form of a

human skeleton. “Sometimes in the womb, one of the twins dies and gets absorbed

into the other one’s body, I heard,” murmured the funeral director. I could not answer

him though. Was this the baby that was crying all along? Was it grieving that it would

not survive when her twin sister dies? Was it still alive inside her sister’s body when

the cremation began? The funeral director told me something again, but I could not

comprehend what he was saying. A baby began to cry in my head.