A Light in the Dark: David's Intergalactic Odyssey

I had always suspected my Aunt Chikoo to be a bit of a weirdo. She's about 25 years older than me, so I never really knew her too well. My parents would visit her every now and then, but I've never been invited. The only thing I know is that she has this weird habit of drinking nothing but orange juice. Whenever I think of her, the first thing that comes to mind are those endless buckets of orange juice that she used to have stacked up in her kitchen.

She was also quite eccentric. She would always say things that didn't really make sense and did extremely bizarre things. But when it came to the family, she was highly respected - and ridiculed behind her back. She was the matriarch after all! When there were family disputes, she would solve them with her odd wisdom, which sometimes made more sense than what our actual parents said!

The last time I visited her was a couple of years ago. She had just moved into a new apartment and had called everyone over for some sort of 'get-together'. She had bought loads of snacks and all sorts of snacks you could imagine. She even brought out a punch bowl full of orange juice! It was actually quite nice for the first hour or so - until she started getting drunk on all those glasses she was drinking from the punch bowl!

After a while, she got real loud and started shouting how none of us were any good and how we were such terrible children for not visiting her more often. We couldn't get her to shut up so we ended up leaving pretty early to head home. My parents were both pretty embarrassed by their loud sister who was embarrassing us all in front of our guests.

Since then, she had been pretty quiet - at least until today. When I received the news that my aunt had passed away, I quickly booked my tickets to go see the funeral home and pay my respects. To be honest, I wasn't really too sad about it - but I still wanted to show some respect as an elder member of the family (and because I didn't want to be seen as ungrateful).

When I arrived at the funeral home, there were already quite a few people there. My Aunt Chikoo apparently had quite a lot of friends from school who came to pay their respects as well as people from church who knew her from church activities. Nevertheless, it seemed like most people were just curious about this strange woman who was known for being crazy!

When I entered the room where the coffin lay, several people shot me looks and pointed at me saying things like "Oh look! Here's David!" or "Don't you remember him? He's my second cousin's daughter's son!" etc... They asked me how long it'd been since I last saw my aunt and how long I thought it'd been since I was last invited over... Then they started asking me if I wanted any orange juice...

I knew what they meant by that one - my aunt's infamous obsession with orange juice! Everyone knew about it! Even though she always only ever drank it straight out of the glass without ice or water or anything else, everyone knew that whenever they visited her place they'd have to drink some as well otherwise they wouldn't be offered anything else!

As everyone sat down waiting for the priest to start his speech one guy whispered to me "Is your aunt still obsessed with orange juice?" And another woman standing next to me kindly answered my question: "Of course she is! That woman has probably drunk gallons upon gallons of that stuff over these past years!"

I tried not to listen to them too much and instead focused on paying my respects to my aunt who used to scare me quite a lot when i was younger but now would probably just make me laugh if i met her again today...