Funeral Manners

You check the time.

Perfect.

As intended, you’ve arrived fashionably late.

Arriving on time for your own funeral might've been rather embarrassing. Well, nothing can be more embarrassing than the fact you’re having a funeral to begin with because they make rather dreadful parties, but arriving on time, or even early, makes a close second. 

You fix your coat, ensuring the tall collar masks your features. 

The cold handle of the church door hits your fingers, and you enter.

Guests—some recognizable, some not—sit scattered throughout the church, leaving gaps in the pews but ensuring each pew holds a body. The weak attempt to create an illusion of a large crowd leaves a slight smile on your lips.

The guests lift their heads as you enter.

My, they look rather bored. A pity that even in death you fail to entertain.

A great aunt of some sort affectionately pats the space beside her, and you fill the seat. You briefly wonder if you should greet her, but she takes your arm without meeting your eyes and gives her attention back to the speaker. 

You study her features, trying to find a name to match the almost familiar face. Heavy charcoal lines her eyes, and although she makes a great show of being distressed, clinging onto your arm with her clammy hands, blowing unceremoniously into a handkerchief, and wailing when the speaker pauses for a brief moment, her makeup remains largely undisturbed. 

Perhaps you should tell her the performance will be more believable if tear stains, or the illusion of them, run down her cheeks. 

You pat her knee, reminding her everything will be okay, and notice a mother of some kind sits several pews to your left. She’s not your mother, of course. Your mother sits in the front most pew like any good mother should, but perhaps this mother is an older cousin who can never spare her time for you because she has one too many kids. 

She sits with three children scattered about her and one in her lap. One child, a son about eleven if you have to guess, plays a video game with the soft beeping disturbing the grief of those nearby. The mother, with one hand covering her mouth as if she’s too distraught by the reality of your death, leans slightly over the child, not to reprimand him but to watch his game. By her slight smile and how she steadily moves closer toward him, you can tell he’s currently winning. 

That’s a relief. 

Someone stands to sing a song. Her partner follows, pulling a guitar from seemingly thin air. As she sings and her partner accompanies her with his guitar, you realize they’ve performed the duet at your grandmother’s funeral nearly fifteen years prior.

A young couple behind you snickers. 

You can’t quite blame them. The singer sings a bit too high, and the guitarist plays a bit too slow. With nearly fifteen years to practice, they have not improved in the slightest.

Your casket rests to the side of the main podium as if the guests have forgotten it. Those sitting closest to it have their knees turned away, as if they’re giving you the cold shoulder, so your casket does not sit in the forefront of their memory. 

Is it tragic or comical how you’ve been forgotten at your own funeral?

The duet dies down, and several people stand, forming a line to give an account of the great life you’ve led, while the others weakly clap for the duet.

The first speaker tells a lie, filling it with crocodile tears.

The second tells a half-truth. She gives a memory that’s certainly true, but somehow your role within the story has been switched, making your bond with the speaker appear stronger.

The third reads a poem. You can’t discern if he’s written it or if he’s found it elsewhere. 

By the fourth, you decide you’re in need of fresh air. You pat your great aunt’s knee and stand. Several people watch you as if jealous of your chance to escape.

Outside, snow falls in a lazy rhythm, and someone’s daughter sits on the ground, attempting to make a snowball with the meager bit of fluff she can gather.

You approach her, and she looks up, offering you a small smile—the only genuine emotion you’ve seen all day. 

You ask, “Wouldn’t you rather be inside? It’s warmer.”

Her face scrunches, and she sweeps her bare fingers along the ground. “Nah. Too boring.”

“Boring?”

“Yup.”

You wait, but she doesn’t elaborate. 

“Can I join you, then?”

She nods.

You kneel beside her, and she gestures for you to hold your hands out. Although the cold air rivals the frost within the church, you do as instructed. She plops what snow she has gathered into your open palms and makes quick work of stealing the snow that’s fallen onto your shoulders and in your hair.

“You know,” you say as snow tumbles onto your nose, “the person who died might like it if you went inside and paid attention to the funeral.”

She shrugs. She takes the meager snowball back from you and adds the new resources she has gathered to it. “Why should I care about someone who’s dead?”

You stare at her. “Everyone else seems to care.”

“Nah.” She licks the snowball then holds it out for you to do the same. “Mom said it’s a waste of a Saturday.”

You can argue with her. You can make a case as to why exactly your funeral isn’t a waste of time and perhaps even convince her to sit through the service like the rest of the guests. Unfortunately, you can’t find any strong arguments to support your case other than the fact it’s your funeral and you might like it better if she sits through it with you. 

Wailing flutters from the church—most likely a gift from your great aunt who wants more attention than she’s receiving. A guitar strums as if the duet prepares for a second round.

The girl looks to the sky and sticks out her tongue to catch snowflakes as they fall.

You can’t remember why you thought it so important to arrive at the funeral fashionably late, but now you wonder if there’s such a thing as leaving fashionably early.

Sticking your tongue out, you catch a snowflake.