The worst part of funerals is about 20 minutes after the service has ended and talk among attendees turns from tragedy and mourning to gradually lighter, more vanilla subjects. I mean, I don’t expect that our lives stay dreary forever, but nothing says the dead are gone and in the past like talking shop over canapés.
But I don’t know. I myself showed a picture of my kids to someone I haven’t seen in years. Who can tell when I’ll ever see this person again and this is the best and only time to catch up, our only connection to each other having just died. But in fairness it was something like an hour after the service ended so… when does one start crossing the line from grieving to gabbing?
I just remember, as people were first arriving, I’d unexpectedly found myself wavering between somber-yet-rational and emotional-breakdown. Seeing all my brother’s pictures from when we were kids to as recently as this summer and thinking he would hate this, it finally fucking dawn on me that he’s not around anymore to protest and that all this is for our benefit.
It was going to be bad. My face was collapsing under the weight of my bulging tear ducts. If I opened my mouth I would emanate a sad, low sob probably followed by gasping then sobbing again. I could feel my insides knot up into a hard ball and I knew that no matter how hard I tried I could never contort my body to a accommodate the bottomless pity I suddenly felt.
I had to hold it back, to stick my fingers into the cracks in the dam. I’d been in denial since I’d heard he’d died — not that I didn’t believe my dad when he told me, but it seemed like some scripted drama playing out while really my brother was just his normally uncommunicative self and would probably text me around Christmas. It always seemed like he’d get back in touch eventually, but in the meantime we’d all act as if he’d passed.
I tried hard not to look at his pictures, but they were everywhere. I looked at non-picture objects: paper weights and candelabrum and a packet of lozenges. I checked my watch for features I’d never given enough thought to (uninterested in the actual the time). I searched out the window for something (ANYTHING!) to distract me, but my eyes were burning at being held open so long and why wasn’t he alive anymore. Why am I in a room full of sad people and feeling crushingly sad myself and my brother is nowhere in sight to mutter some inappropriate truth to me and shake me out of this echo chamber of stifled sobs.
I scrolled my remembrance speech up and down on my phone, a blur of words I’d so unemotionally written hours ago. That morning I’d tied together a story of him and me along with a poem that reminded me of him, but my concern when I wrote it was grammar and flow and phonetics. Of making sure the points were made, were not buried by fluff, and had the lyrical and emotional arc I’d desired. But now all I could think when I saw the text was how the words had failed what I felt right now and how I would fail to read them aloud and how my phone screen would soon be blurred behind tears about to be wrenched from my eyes.
And then I came up with a lie. Just to get me through, although, as of this writing, its effect persists. I would wind the tape back and then I would play a mental trick that I often play when I’m building or concentrating on something. I squint my eyes and fill my ears with white noise so that the only thing that exists is the thing on which I’m focusing. Everything else is blurry and malleable.
The lie was this: my brother was not dead. In fact he was here sitting in an armchair just out of view. People were laughing. I was right — he hated being in a room filled with his pictures and slightly embarrassed that people were throwing a party for him (for some undetermined reason). But he was glad for the company, that so many of his friends and family had made the trip. It’d been so long since he’d seen many of them. He wasn’t going to fight it, there were too many surprises for him to be mad anymore. No one sang Jolly Old Fellow any more so he didn’t have to worry about that.
We’d take turns toasting him, but this is where I’d have to work harder to prop up the ruse. People would naturally tend to talk about him in the past tense (which is crazy because he’s sitting right there!) so I would mentally correct their grammar as I tend to do anyway, but, until now, have rarely had to fix tenses. Was became is, tried became tries, loved became loves, and so on.
And through every speech my brother would react from the obscurity of his arm chair — laughing, grimacing, making lighthearted or childish or endearing remarks through each reminiscence. And people would laugh and glance adoringly between the chair and the speaker.
And it worked. This all made sense. Why was I crying? That was weird. I don’t want him to think I’m super emotional. But now at least I can get through my speech and maybe he’ll like it and I’m sure he’ll say he does (but probably not, even though I’ve always desperately craved his approval). It would just be odd to fly out here in early January for his appreciation party and NOT say something at this jolly shindig.
And I know this lie will fail and I’ll pay for it with grief and guilt, but until then where are the canapés? Someone wants to talk shop with me and, oh yeah, I need to ask my brother why he never texted me at Christmas.
