I stretched over her body and grabbed the statue. That’s when the Virgin Mary’s hand moved!

Uncle Wull was the man who worked as commissionaire at the Regal Cinema in Small’s Wynd off Hawkhill.

Julie’s daughter Mary had a flat around the corner in Kemnay Gardens, where she lived with husband Ronnie Torano and their children – ‘Wee’ Ronnie and Ann, both not much younger than Joe and me.

It was in their flat that it was decided to hold a bit of a get-together the evening before Julie’s funeral. I was competing in the Dundee Easter Chess Congress that year so when I turned up it was to find the family event in full swing.

Once I’d let Mum know how I’d done that day, I set about circulating around my cousins, uncles and aunties catching up with their busy lives and finding out who was going to be married, who was expecting a child and who wasn’t keeping so well.

Resilience

Julie’s resilience in living so long was being compared to Grandma’s 84-year stint down on planet Earth. It was a family joke that Grandma was so fit and healthy that when she died, the doctor said he couldn’t find anything wrong with her.

Dying at an advanced age was therefore quite possible if you were of Casciani stock and that cheered up us younger ones quite a bit.

It appeared that if you managed to actually survive being born (which lots of the family babies hadn’t) and got beyond the age of three, then there was a fair chance you could count on having your three-score-and-ten or maybe even a bit more.

Grandma had reached 80+ and daughter Julie just short of that, while next in line Lizzie was already in her late sixties and fit as a fiddle. The men had fared less well, due in part to the world wars, although Grandad Casciani had died of bronchitis between them.

Of course, the topic of death and the changes it brings (especially to the deceased) was always inextricably linked to the Catholic religion in our family and it was generally assumed Julie was now in heaven.

So when the assembled family members started talking about Julie’s religious icons which they were going to spread around the family as keepsakes (husband Wull being non-Catholic),

I listened closer to what was being said about her rosaries and statues and missals and medals and paintings and souvenirs and Lourdes water. No bible, of course. We were Catholic after all.

At some point, Auntie Cissie told the whole room that I was a great fan of the Blessed Virgin Mary and that Julie would definitely have wanted me to have her statue of the Mother of Jesus.

I felt quite honoured given my lack of years and accepted the keepsake at once.

What I didn’t expect, however, was that cousin Mary would give me the key to her mum’s house and tell me to go and fetch it there and then.

I took the key from her and was just leaving the crowded living room when she added: “You won’t be scared of your dead Auntie, will you?” I felt my insides twitch violently. I had not appreciated that dear Auntie Julie would still be lying in her coffin.

And of course, given the family tradition, that coffin would still be open...

Grabbed me

After nodding that I wouldn’t have a problem, I tried to pull myself together. How would I be able to go into Auntie Julie’s house and remove the statue from the head of her open coffin? What if she opened her eyes? What if she grabbed me? What if she sat up and accused me of stealing her statue?

Oh no! This was too scary, really. But my problem was that I had to avoid admitting I was too frightened. At 16 I was trying to be a grown-up.

I concluded that there was no choice but to go in, take the statue and run.

Assuming dead Auntie Julie did not grab me, I reckoned I could be in and out again in less than a minute.

Julie and Wull’s flat was the bottom left of a block of two-up two-down. I entered the close, tiptoed up to the door and paused to listen. When I was sure Auntie Julie wasn’t walking around inside, I knocked on the door. Why did I do that?

Maybe I was waiting for her to shout “Come in!” But for some reason I knocked again. I slowly inserted the key in the Yale lock and turned it, before carefully pushing the door open and stepping inside.

I planned to leave that door wide open, but to my horror it swung back towards the closed position aided by a kind of spring hinge.

I grabbed it as it creaked past me and pushed it fully open again. Looking straight ahead I could see the closed living-room door to my right and the open bedroom door to my left. Inside the bedroom, laid on two wooden trestles, was Auntie Julie’s coffin. I could just make out her nose sticking up from her blanched face.

And behind her head, at the far end of the coffin, there was a tall, thin occasional table, on top of which stood the Virgin Mary statue with staff in hand.

A quick glance around the lobby revealed nothing with which I could jam the front door open. To look for something in another room would obviously mean letting the door shut as I moved away.

Taking a deep breath, I prepared to sprint into the room, grab the statue and hopefully get back to the door before it shut. One, two, three, go!

I was in the bedroom and up to the head of the coffin in a flash, trying really hard not to look at my Auntie Julie’s corpse in case she looked back at me. I stretched over her body and grabbed the statue.

Frantic

That’s when the Virgin Mary’s hand moved! I screamed and dropped the statue before fleeing to the now closed front door. I opened it at the second frantic attempt and jumped out into the close.

The door closed in front of me. What in the name of all the Saints was that? How could the hand with the staff in it have moved? It was impossible, but it had definitely happened, I was sure.

OK. Time to calm down and take stock. I had to go back with the statue but I’d dropped it in the bedroom where the coffin was. How was I going to get it back?

I gave myself a real shake, turned the key in the lock for a second time, went into the flat and stopped at the entrance to the bedroom, my eyes scanning the floor for the statue, or at least bits of it.

Where was it? Where could it have rolled? With all possibilities considered, I quickly came to a conclusion I really didn’t want to arrive at.

I stretched up on tiptoe and peeked back into the open coffin. Sure enough, there it was, still in one piece, lying against dead Auntie Julie’s right cheek!

The whole situation was becoming worse and worse, but I was at last feeling less panicked and I forced myself to just go back in and gently remove the statue from the coffin.

By George Burton