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 The Return of Aunt Elisha                                       Pat Huck

        My Aunt Elisha wasn't a bad old stick - in an acidic kind of way. It was true that we seldom saw eye to eye, either spiritually or physically and contrived always to keep our meetings at suitably spaced intervals. She was happily - or so I thought - well housed amongst the upper crust of Sloan Lane where she enjoyed a garden, both created and lovingly tended by her green fingers. So it came as rather a surprise to receive a letter from her, terse as ever and coming straight to the point.

      "Dear John," it said. "I have decided  to end my days in Canada." I imagined there would be quite a few of those still in store, seeing that she was a mere fifty or so years to the good. It went on. "My house is already in the hands of an agent and I sail next Wednesday." In the days of Aunt Elisha, aeroplanes were not as frequent as they are now and they cost a lot.
      Well, it did give me quite a shock. I wondered if she might be looking for a new man in her life, being an unwilling widow of some four years. Or maybe she might have thought the Canadian Winter more in keeping with her temperament. (Perish the thought!). Anyway, whatever the reason she had made up her mind and left me with just enough time to see her off - and which I dutifully did without the loss of a single tear.
      I didn't hear anything after that for a year or two, until I received a cable asking me to go across to Canada and "see to things". She had unexpectedly died and I, her only surviving relative, would be responsible for tidying things up. So I hastily threw a few clothes into a suitcase and arrived in Winnipeg which had been her home for the last five years of her residence in Canada.
      I viewed her remains in the company of her few friends but without any hoped-for husband amongst them. The funeral service was a quiet affair, during which I rather hoped that, apart from the lost cause of a husband, other ambitions might have proved happier for her. I never knew and in due course I received into my keeping, the jar of her ashes but more worryingly also, a letter from her solicitor that was welcome in some ways, since it stated that I was the recipient of a legacy - quite substantial too - but coupled with a request I certainly did not like, that her remains be scattered on that old and much beloved garden of hers in Sloan Lane. The money would, until then be kept firmly in trust.