“…though she may be gone, she will live on in our hearts and in our memories. As a mother, a daughter, a wife, and a friend. She will be missed.”
Eric stepped back from the podium, trying and failing to stem the flow of tears in his eyes as the minister took his place, continuing the funeral. Dani was almost jealous as she watched him quietly take his seat again. She hadn’t cried a single tear through the whole thing. Not because she didn’t feel anything—the gnawing pit in her stomach and pounding of her pulse in her ears was proof that she did. She just didn’t cry like that. Most of the time, it was fine. It kept prying eyes away and nosy but well-intentioned people distant. It helped her look strong.
Funerals were not the time to look strong.
She looked over to her right, where her other brother, Jamie, was sitting ramrod-straight with his hands in his lap, tears flowing silently down his face. His boyfriend was sitting to his right, quietly holding Jamie’s hand, his face solemn. She was a little surprised Jamie had brought him, considering how poorly received their relationship had been with their mom. In truth, she was surprised that Jamie had come at all.
The was keenly aware that she was the only woman in the room who wasn’t crying. Her aunts were in various states of distress—her aunt Lana in particular was beside herself, and it was all Uncle Brady could do to keep her from breaking into full-body sobs. Dani was taken aback by that; her mom and Lana hadn’t seen each other since Lana was in elementary school, and they rarely talked. Grief hits everyone differently, she supposed. She wondered if she would feel the same way if it was her sibling in the casket instead of her mom. She would definitely cry for Jamie. For Eric… he’s so much older than her that he felt more like a cousin than a brother. She would be sad, but she didn’t know if she would cry.
“…-mportant to remember and celebrate the life of the departed, to cherish those memories, and know that this grief will pass, this sorrow will heal. Let us take a moment of silence and remember Melinda Hall. Let us celebrate her life as we mourn her departure from this world.”
The minister took a remote from the podium and pointed it at the transparent screen that sat in front of the casket. The display shifted from a picture of Dani’s mom, one of those headshots they put up on company websites, into a slideshow of a number of photos submitted by family and friends, all while a slow, wistful song started blaring over the speakers. The first pictures were of Dani’s mom as a baby, swaddled in Dani’s grandmother’s arms; as a child, blowing out a birthday candle shaped like the number 4; as a teenager, showing off a USNA passport, one of the first ones printed after the war; as a young woman in a black gown and an Oxford cap, smiling as she held up a framed diploma. The pit in Dani’s stomach shifted, but never threatened to break through the numbness.
As more pictures rolled by, Dani idly wondered what her mom was like back then. If she had been any different than when Dani knew her. If Dani had grown up like her mom, bouncing from city to city, crumbling town to crumbling town as one country tore itself into many, would she have turned out like her mom? Would she and her mom have been friends back then? If the situation were reversed, and her mom had been grown up now, would things be different?
A wedding photo, showing her mom with her and Jamie’s dad, faded into a family photo with all five of them together: Dani’s mom standing next to her and Jamie’s dad, smiling, while a very sullen-looking teenaged Eric and an elementary-aged Jamie stood in front of them, Jamie’s bright smile riddled with gaps. Dani, a toddler at the time, was standing between the two brothers, sporting her own smile, bright and genuine in the way that only a little kid can. The pit welled into her chest and she could feel a burning sensation just behind the bridge of her nose. Still, the dam didn’t break, no matter how much she wanted it to.
Oh, how she wanted it to break. She wanted to scream, to cry, to break down. She wanted to be like Aunt Lana, heaving and sobbing in unrestrained grief. More pictures. A selfie at the end of a pier, with a 16-year-old Jamie and 13-year-old Dani behind her. She remembered that vacation. Lake Superior. She remembered her mom taking that picture, snidely remarking that her face would get stuck like that if she didn’t smile every once in a while. The next picture was from Christmas the following year, everyone gathered in her parents’ living room. Jamie was conspicuously absent. From the corner of her eye, she saw Jamie look away, David gently squeezing his hand.
Pictures never told the full story.
More photos with family and friends, at restaurants and special events, business parties and holiday cookouts. Sitting next to Dani’s dad, in his hospital bed. Dani’s senior prom. Eric’s college graduation. Eric and Val’s wedding. Helping Dani move into her first dorm. The last picture was her standing with Eric and Val at the edge of his balcony, lit by an artificial sunset projected by the balcony lights. The song ended, the last picture faded, and the screen darkened, turning opaque. After a moment of total, solemn silence, words appeared on the screen in a delicate cursive font. Her mother’s full name above the date of birth and date of death. The entirety of her mom’s life compressed into three words and two numbers.
The minister read from the Bible—an old paper copy that looked like it would disintegrate with the slightest breeze—and closed in prayer. Praying that her soul be guided into Heaven, that God would give her family peace and comfort. Dani shifted, uncomfortable. Jamie choked back a lurching sob, quietly shaking with sorrow, with what Dani could only assume was questions that would never be answered, his own what-ifs and could-have-beens that kept him up at night and left bile on his tongue.
She almost missed the minister dismissing the mourners, calling for family and pallbearers to come up to the front. She had been dreading this part. Eric and three uncles all approached the casket. Val took over for Uncle Brady in consoling Lana, while her Aunt Kasey kept her gaze trained on the floor. Dani, Jamie, and David stood close enough to hear the minister, but stayed a few feet away from their other relatives.
“Now, the pallbearers will follow me through the doors and across the skyway to the building next to this one, and everyone else will follow behind,” the minister explained. He had been a confidant for Dani’s mom, and his diction was stilted with the effort of keeping himself composed. “When we get to the viewing room, the pallbearers will keep walking while the rest of us stay behind. Pallbearers, you just set the casket down on the table and rejoin everyone else. Any questions?”
When nobody replied, he nodded awkwardly to the pallbearers and began the procession to the cremation. Dani, Jamie, and David lagged behind, sparing a solemn glance before following through the double doors, leaving the empty funeral hall behind.
“I didn’t realize you still smoked.”
Dani nearly dropped her cigarette as she whipped around, her heartrate spiking. It was just Jamie. She exhaled slowly in an attempt to calm herself and leaned back against the waist-high wall that marked the edge of the roof.
“Jesus Christ, Jamie,” she said, exasperated. “Don’t sneak up on me like that. It’s not funny.”
“Sorry,” he said sheepishly, “I wasn’t trying to be.” He walked up next to her, leaning on the wall, and looking down on the city streets several stories below. The squat old building was one of the older ones in this district, a rectangle of concrete with dark windows and shit wiring. Dani watched the passers-by. The cremation ended without fanfare; Dani had left as soon as the minister had said his final blessings and handed the ashes off to Eric. She didn’t want to stick around for the awkward small talk and reminiscing about her mom. She pulled a long drag from her cigarette and blew the smoke out into the cool autumn air, watching as the wind carried it away.
“How…” Jamie started, unsure how to ask his question. Dani braced herself, mentally anchoring herself as the dull pain began to swell in her stomach again. “What do we do now?”
The question caught her off guard. She knew how to answer the standard questions, how she was doing, what she was doing now, how she felt, if she’d miss her mom. This question hadn’t even crossed her mind yet, not at any point in the week since she first heard the news. What she would do, without the shadow of her mom’s disapproval and scorn lingering over everything she did, everything she believed, everything that made Dani who she was. She let the silence drag out for a few minutes, pulling on the cigarette until it was down to the filter.
“I don’t know,” she said truthfully, flicking the cigarette butt off the side of the building.
“Yeah, me neither,” he said. They stood there for a while in silence. Dani stewed in her thoughts, trying to sort through the chaotic morass of memories that the funeral had drudged up. Every screaming match with her mom, brought on by the constant criticisms and invasions of privacy. Good memories bubbled up to the surface as well. A handful of memories from her early childhood, of lullabies and packed lunches, museum trips and words of wisdom that were actually helpful, even to this day. Bittersweet moments of shared grief in the weeks and months after her dad passed away.
She’d had a year to say goodbye to her dad as he wasted away on that hospital bed, his bone marrow eating the rest of him alive. She hadn’t had that with her mom. One little blood vessel had burst and that was it. Her story just stopped; taken out of the mess she’d left behind.
“She’s really gone, isn’t she?” Dani asked, with no particular emotion in her voice. She felt the moment hang in the air, the finality slowing the world to a standstill. She idly wondered if her heart had stopped as she waited for Jamie’s answer.
“Yeah,” he sighed, his voice tired, weighed down by the finality of his answer. Dani looked over at her brother, meeting his tired eyes. The swell in her stomach boiled over, shooting up right through her heart and throat and burned behind the bridge of her nose. She tried to speak but found no words. Nothing she said could capture how she felt as the confirmation pierced through the bubble of numbness, striking the wounds her mother’s passing had reopened with the force of a bullet. The dam shattered; Dani collapsed, falling to her knees as though she’d been physically struck.
She leaned her entire weight against the rooftop wall, and all she could do was sob.