A Funeral

It is cold.  It is raining. It is a funeral.  My funeral.  I don’t feel the cold.  I don’t feel the rain.  My name is Samantha Harrington and I am dead.  Yet here I am, standing alone beside my coffin, observing my own funeral.  I killed myself.  I did.  I don’t know why. No, that was a lie.  I killed myself to see if I could, to see if I had it in me to take control of my own life.  To escape my overbearing life of privilege with my overbearing mother.  Not that this is her fault.  It’s never her fault.  She gave me everything, she’d be the first to tell you that.  Everything I ever wanted, as long as what I wanted was what she wanted, and what she wanted was for me to be perfect.  She wanted the impossible: a perfect daughter, a perfect student, with a perfect body, perfect clothes and perfect friends.

The pastor says something about life and death and a “better place,” but no one is actually listening.  A few people constantly check their watches and a teenager younger than me texts on her cell phone.  There are quite a few people here; I should be pleased that my funeral got such a good turnout.  They cry into their handkerchiefs, sit silently trying not to look bored, or make a show of looking pathetic and somber, staring sadly at my coffin or off into the cloudy sky.  Most are just here for the show.  It’s all a show.

I turn my back on the audience and look instead at my casket.  I wanted to be cremated, but I guess my parents would never have known that.  The coffin was expensive, made of pure oak wood and shined by hand until your face gleams back at you.  I have no reflection.  Inside the casket, my body lies silent and still; face passive, hands folded upon my chest.  I can see it.  I can see my lifeless body.  My makeup is simple, but pretty; my coveted long blonde hair is straitened and lying softly across my shoulders.  “Is that really what I look like?”  I’m wearing a new, white dress.  I never wore white when I was alive; it makes me look like a ghost.  Ironic, seeing as now I suppose I am one. 

I watch as my casket begins to slowly descend into the wet earth.  I hear the audience stand.  A silent standing ovation; just for me.  Behind me, I hear a strangled sob.  I had been avoiding looking at her throughout the funeral, but now I turn to my mother.  Where before she was standing, stoic and stiff now she is slumped, the only thing keeping her from falling to the wet grass and mud are my father’s strong arms holding her up as silent tears fall from his eyes too.

I go to my mother and softly touch her face, then take her hand.  She doesn’t react or move in any way. She doesn’t know I hold it, but I do.  I hear the casket hit the earth with a soft thud.  The show is over.  The audience leaves.  I stand a while with my parents, looking at the hole my body will rot in.  I take my hand away from my mother.  She is able to stand alone now.  I hug her and then my father.  “I’m sorry,” I whisper as I walk away.



         











It was cold.  It was raining.  It was a funeral.  A funeral for a daughter who had just begun to live and now she was dead.  Her mother sat up front in a black suit, with a black umbrella above her head, and her husband’s arm around her stiff shoulders.  The pitter-patter of rain drops hitting the umbrella nearly drowned out what the pastor was saying, but Kelly Harrington didn’t hear him anyway.  She was thinking about her daughter.

No one really knows what it’s like to lose someone.  Even if they themselves have lost someone, it’s different for everyone.  No one knows what it’s like to come home one day and find your daughter sleeping in her room next to an empty bottle of your prescription sleeping pills.  Few have experienced the panic that swells inside you as you run to your daughter’s side and try to shake her awake only to watch her face disappear as the body bag is zipped closed.  Your thoughts are drowned out by the screaming of sirens and you can’t speak, you can’t feel, you can’t move.  You are stone.

One word kept ringing in Mrs. Harrington’s head.  “Why? Why, why, why?”  She had given her daughter everything: a new car, a beautiful house, and beautiful clothes.  Samantha had gone to a good school and had good friends.  She had been popular.  She had wanted for nothing, but none of that mattered anymore because now she was gone.  “What could I have done better?  How could I have saved her?”

Everyone worth knowing had come to the funeral, but Mrs. Harrington didn’t care.  It was all a show, she would know.  She had been acting her whole life.  Perfect hair, perfect clothes, a perfect house, and a lot of money equaled the perfect family with the perfect life.  Then her daughter died and her perfect world was shattered. 

She couldn’t look at the other people come to pay their respects to her and her family.  She just sat and stared and tried not to look at anything in particular, especially the coffin.  Even the coffin was just another prop.  Anyone that looked at it could tell it was expensive.  The wood was so shiny you could see your reflection in it.  The rain glistened as it hit the closed casket and rolled down the sides.  Mrs. Harrington could not look at the thing her daughter’s body would rot in the ground in.  How could her daughter leave her alone like this?  She reminded herself to blink and breathe steadily as the pastor finished speaking.

Mrs. Harrington finally cried as she watched her only daughter sink slowly into her dark, lonely grave.  First gentle tears, then heaving sobs that she couldn’t hold in any longer.  She wanted to jump onto her daughter’s coffin and go down with her, just so neither of them would be alone.  She remained where she was only because her husband’s arms were around her, holding her up, keeping her steady. 

         Mrs. Harrington heard the soft thud as the coffin hit the bottom.  It reverberated through her chest and rang in her ears.  She stood, composed again, silent tears rolling down her cheeks, and stared at her daughter’s grave.  She did not notice as everyone stood and left.  She stayed staring with her husband and whispered softly, “I’m sorry.”



         











It’s cold.  It’s raining. It’s a funeral and, so, you act accordingly.  You sit silently in an itchy black dress that’s too tight in the shoulders, but it’s the only black dress you own that would be appropriate for a funeral and your mother made you wear it.  The day is cold and wet and depressing.  “I don’t want to be here,” you think to yourself.  “I didn’t even know her.”  All you know about the girl is she was the daughter of your mother’s colleague, she was a teenager, not quite sure how old, and she had killed herself. 

Your mother sits beside you, one hand placed firmly on top of yours.  To everyone else, it’s a sign of love and comfort.  To you it’s just a pretty picture and that’s all it’s supposed to be.  A pretty picture of a perfect mother and daughter sitting quietly at a funeral.  “You must always keep up appearances,” your mother always tells you.  That’s the only reason you two are even at this funeral.  Keeping up appearances.  Your mother knew the family of the dead girl and was invited.  It would have been rude and unfeeling not to go.  With your free hand, you secretly text your friends how bored and miserable you are.

You look up from you cell phone and stare at the coffin.  “I have a lot in common with her,” you think to yourself, “Samantha Harrington.”  You don’t like the thought, but you couldn’t help it and you knew it was true as soon as you though it.  Samantha hadn’t gone to your school, you didn’t have any of the same friends, and, yet, you had lived the same life.  Both of your mothers are hotshot lawyers, you’re both upper class royalty, and everything you ever wanted could be and is handed to you on a silver platter, but that’s your mother’s world, not yours.  And Samantha believed that too because if she had been happy in her perfect plastic world, then why did she kill herself? 

Yes, you are just like Samantha Harrington and that terrifies you, because if she killed herself, what’s stopping you?

You are pulled out of your thoughts when your mother removes her hand from yours and stands.  The pastor has finished speaking, the coffin reaches the bottom of the grave with a soft thud, and the funeral is over.  Your mother is already moving, anxious to leave, but you don’t follow her.  Instead, you grab a red rose from a vase near the open grave.  The rain on its petals sparkles like dew.  “I’m sorry,” you whisper as you toss the flower onto the shiny coffin that will soon be buried under dirt and forgotten.