Strength

 

When there is a death in the family, everything seems to move quicker- except for you. It’s like you’re just standing still while everyone else is racing around you. Like you’re the old caricature of a young boy in color holding a red balloon and tears roll from his face, while hordes and hordes of people race behind him in black and white.

Then you’re dressed in your Sunday best and you’re standing in a funeral home staring at your dead loved one: they look peaceful- eyes closed, pursed lips, their hands are holding each other as they sit idly on their stomach; their face looks pale and puffy but otherwise they look normal, it’s as if they’re just sleeping and that at any minute they’ll wake up like nothing even happened.

And everyone walks up to you, even people you hardly know, saying “I’m sorry for your loss”, and you never know what to say back to them and you don’t want to say anything back to them because you never know when the next word you speak will turn into just unwarranted and uncontrollable sobs.

The preacher will give some astounding eulogy that usually tries to console the heart stricken, or one that tries to make us confront our own mortality, or even to celebrate the life of the person; but you never truly listen, you just sit there, staring at the body in the casket and wondering why it had to be that way.

And we wonder about the what ifs: what if I would’ve changed my last words with them, what if I spent more Time with them, what if I showed my love more, what if, what if, what if. We get stuck in these what ifs, wondering if we could’ve changed anything, if our loved ones would still be with us.

When my father died, everything was just a blur, the funeral, the people, the eulogy; the only thing that wasn’t, was my mind. I was stuck in the what ifs. I went to visit my grandma and sister in Ohio, leaving my dad in Florida to go to my aunt’s house to go to her birthday party. And at the party, he was shot by my aunt’s ex-boyfriend. What if I would’ve went? Would I have been able to talk my dad into not getting involved? Would I have been able to diffuse the situation? Would my father and I’s places be switched?

These were the thoughts I dwelled on while I watched everyone move from the back of the funeral parlor to my dad’s casket, paying their respects to him and then to my sister, me, and my aunts and uncles.

The more people who walked by our pews, the more my sister, mom, stepmom, and aunts and uncles sobbed. With each passerby, the more the whaling cries of each person became because it made his death seem more real. I tried my best not to cry and I made it through the entire ceremony but when it was our pews chance to walk by his corpse, I could start to feel the tears welling up. I’m usually the strong one, the one who wears a strong jaw and stiff upper lip but when I walked by him, my jaw became weak and my upper lip quivered, and I could feel the warmth of the tears rolling down my face.

SomeTimes it’s hard to seem strong when you feel like you have no strength at all.

****