Pine Box

A coffin is shaped, and has a removable lid, but a casket is rectangular, and has a hinged lid. They are both quite similar, at least in function, but I had been taught the difference by my parents and their ceaseless planning for the future. A casket and a coffin are not the same. Often the two have been mistaken for each other, especially by people who have never attended a funeral. I was never wholly enthusiastic about my first one.

The road was full of potholes that filled with water when it rained. When the wind was still, they looked like holes ripped through our world that peeked into another realm. Dad was good about avoiding the tears in our world, but that didn’t stop him from repeatedly arguing with the city to get the road fixed.

We didn’t really talk in the car on a normal day, but today we didn’t even have the radio on. Mourning was supposed to be done silently. Mom had slipped a bit of paper into my hand before we left home and told me to read it. It looked like a brochure or an invitation to a fancy party. The only thing about it was that it was not for a party, it was for a funeral. 

I didn’t look at the paper, because I didn’t know the man it was for. Mom and Dad knew him, but I don’t think they knew him very well. I had never lost someone close to me before, at least not someone who was human.

Maybe one or two years before, I had hosted a private funeral for my pet rat. She was a small grey rex that I had named ‘Pebbles’. I buried Pebbles in a shoe box instead of a proper coffin, and I could only manage about two feet instead of the traditional six. But Pebbles had never been a person, she was just a rat. I had known that a human funeral would be different.

We walked the final length towards the service. I had stowed Mom’s paper in a pocket in my suit. The cloth was very dark, all black on black. Everyone else was wearing the same color scheme. It was bizarre to see the few people I recognized in such darkened shades. They normally had their own pallets and combinations to match their textures and styles. 

Aunt Mary noticed us first. We were on time, like we always were. She talked to Mom first, like she always did, and then hugged me firmly. The people who showed up got herded towards a battalion of folding chairs that faced a rectangular casket and a lectern. There was a patient line of speakers shifting uncomfortably on one side. There weren't very many of them.

I didn’t want to pay attention, but there was only so much else I could do. There wasn’t much that people had to say about him. There weren't any true successes they could tag onto his name. Maybe there weren’t any that they had noticed. Everyone who talked made it a point to mention all the good things about him. It seems like it would have been better to tell him those things when he was still alive. Now it was just pointless.

Pebbles was a very clever rat. I learnt about all her good things by watching her. I knew that when her eyes bugged out she was grinding her teeth together and something had made her happy. I reminded Pebbles of all her good things by being with her. I gave her as much of my time as I could. That was how I told her I loved her. 

The speeches finished and a number of people began to wander and talk with each other before it was really time to say goodbye to the dead man. I didn’t talk to anyone, I didn’t have much to say, and for most of the people there, I didn’t know them any better than I knew the man in the casket.

It only took a minute or two before an old gentleman approached me. He seemed tired of talking with so many people, and was taking the chance to assume that I would give him enough excuse to avoid his family.

The man had old, weather--beaten skin like the bark of an old tree, and a nose that pointed straight up to his eyebrows like an arrow. His eyes were a pale, smokey blue, like watery, faded windows peering into another world. They looked like something you could drown in. The man’s coat sloped over the curve of his shoulders like dust resting over an exhausted tombstone, and his suit was dark and grieving, with a weak flower pinned to his lapel.

“You didn’t know him, did you?”

I shook my head. The man sat down next to me with a sigh.

“In a sense, neither did I. I should have tried though, I should have tried harder.”

We didn’t say anything after that, we only sat beside each other in silence. It was quiet when I held my funeral for Pebbles. There was no eulogy, or wreaths of flowers. In fact, I was the only one who had shown up. 

Mom came over and took my arm. “Come here,” She said. “It’s time to pay our respects.”

I didn’t understand the invisible respect there was to look down on someone’s body. The man was clearly dead, it wasn’t like these visits would mean anything to him. Maybe it was only meaningful to the people visiting. It was their last chance to say goodbye. What a waste. He would never get to say it back.

I didn’t expect to feel much when I saw the stranger, but when I saw whose body lay in that rectangular box, I froze. His eyes were closed, but were they open I knew they would be smoky and blue, windows into a realm I could never fathom. It was the man who had spoken to me, the one who told me that he never really knew the man in the casket. But the dead man didn't have a flower, and his suit wasn’t darkened with feeling. 

I shuffled away numbly, desperately sanning the mourners for an old man with a flower, but there was none. Mom and Dad had no inclination to stay, and they weren’t the only ones who were leaving. I wanted to turn my head down and block out the world, to try and ignore that weathered face that had so quickly scared me. Instead I watched for him, trying, hoping to see a living being with a rich dark suit to shield him from a casket of his own. 

I saw his eyes first. It was that same terrifying blue, the kind that made his pupils look small and menacing. But there was nothing menacing about the old man; why did I feel so chilled when I looked at him? He was supposed to be dead, he was the man in the casket. But then there he was, standing on the street, smiling at me with a faint look of attempted camaraderie.

I turned away. On the brief walk to the car I grasped for the paper Mom had given me. I flicked it open clumsily, moving too quickly for my actions to really be effective. There were pictures of the man, most of them when he was younger, when he looked happy. The people around him looked happy too, like they really knew each other well.

One picture caught my attention above any other. It only held two people, but their faces were recognizable enough that I didn’t need to check the names underneath. They both had the same arrow-like nose, but this time one of them was masked by a white bandage. The two young men were the image of each other, like someone’s face when it's reflected in the calm surface of a puddle. They were twins.

They smiled together, or at least they tried to. Their watery eyes betrayed something different, something that was always left unsaid.

They were only twins. I reminded myself. 

Somehow I was still unsettled. 

We didn’t talk much in the car, though I’m not sure I would have noticed if we did. Every time I blinked I only saw the man in the casket. But then sometimes his eyes were open, or sometimes he smiled like he did in his picture. Sometimes his suit had a flower, sometimes it didn’t. In every image I knew he was dead. His face held no emotion, no feeling. It was cold and hard, like a chiseled statue of wax. The picture was a monument to loss, to chances wasted. 

You didn’t know him, did you? Neither did I.

The man in the casket ran out of time. Or maybe it wasn’t just him. Maybe they both did. Behind the dark flash of my closed lids I saw a weathered face etched with remorse. This one was still alive, at least in body.

I should have tried though, I should have tried harder.