Mom,
I went to your nieces funeral today.
It was harder then I had anticipated.
It seems every time someone in the family dies, I lose pieces of you,
and I have to wonder; will I ever run out of those pieces?
Tears fell despite my struggle with them, because today there is one less person that knew your laugh and how you looked in a prom dress. One less someone that remembered your hair without the streaks of gray and knew how you loved to dance. Today, in some ways, you have died again.
The funeral was in a cookie cutter chapel.
The walls, pews, the ceiling, all painted a generic vanilla; as if the very blandness of our surroundings would make us forget what we were there for. The quietness of it all blanketing us, muffling...everything.
Death should never be quiet. It should scream aloud your absence and ring from the rafters that you are gone. It should rail at the injustice and bring us eye to eye with our mortality.
May I never be mourned in a chapel of nothingness.
I listened as they played a song of redemption. My eyes found the ceiling and clung there as if to anchor me to this room, this moment; least I float away; piggy backing on the backs of all the prayers littering the air around me.
The stumbling eulogies are markedly less eloquent then the words of some stranger set to music and all I could think of was the day we buried you.
It was four years and five days ago; today it feels like yesterday.
Being here makes me feel small again. That little girl in barrettes that was afraid to talk to the adults. They gather around my sister and I am a shadow. To young to remember everyone's faces, to old to pretend I'm invisible.
I see your face reflected in those near me and it both comforts and hurts. I listen to family squabbles being discussed and I wish I could shake them at the senselessness of it,
but they are family; we pass on stubbornness in our genes the way others pass down brown eyes.
I remember it rained the day you were buried. The skies opened up and drowned the ground with its tears.
The storm fit the fury inside me. It felt right then, the rain.
Today it's grey and clear, and the crisp cool air soothes the heat under my skin.
Today too, feels right for a funeral.
...I miss you mom.
