No one noticed me. They never do. I
was dressed impeccably in my best suit, hands in my lap, a mournful
gaze on my face. I was respectful and in a funeral, no one questions
those who are properly contained in the skin of emotional reserve. The
body looked handsome, given the circumstances. How it is that they can
prepare such things is beyond me. Perhaps we would be better off if
this weren't the case, if we had to look at the dead as they are and
not as we imagine they should be. The mother was weeping in the corner,
being held together by what looked like one of her other children. The
father was in the back of the room, drinking coffee with other men. All
of them removed from action. I nodded silently to a few other people in
the seats near me. We were in this together, our collective nods seemed
to say, acknowledging the loss. The service was short and to the point.
Life lived. Too short. Grief. I waited for the tears and again, they
didn't come. They never come. Two years gone and still, I could not
shed a tear for her. What was wrong with me? I made a slow route around
the room, drawing in as much of their sadness as I could and silently
offering to be the one to hold it all in for them, to feel the weight
of loss for them, to give them a moment's reprieve. Such sadness and
yet, for me, nothing. I left as I had come, with stealth and beyond the
field of vision of anyone in the room. The obit crunched as I fingered
it in my pocket. There was another up the street. A woman, age 52,
cancer. I was already dressed and ready and hopeful, truly hopeful,
that I would find some tears where tears had not naturally come for me
two years ago this very week.
