I guess… I guess this meant I should get up and head to the front.
My body was stiff as I got up, and each step that brought me closer to that casket, closer to the embalmed body resting inside, it only grew stiffer. Oliver couldn’t get a priest to oversee the funeral, since the police ruled it a suicide. Certain religions were very against deaths like that.
I practically collapsed in the front row, feeling the need to cry.
No. I couldn’t. I had to be strong. I had to be strong even though I felt like giving up. Mom wouldn’t want me to give up, anyway; she’d want me to push through the pain and the grief and come out a better person.
Ms. Smith sat beside me, and she handed me a small, folded piece of paper. On the front, a picture of my mom was printed, a smiling picture, one where she was genuinely happy. Inside sat a list of readings, songs and such we would be going through during the service. I’d told Oliver I didn’t want to read anything, didn’t want to get up and speak in front of anybody, so the minister would be doing it all for me.
On the back of the pamphlet, a prayer was printed. Mom was never really that religious; she always said religion was nice, but that most people who practiced it didn’t follow the teachings their God and their prophets taught. Some of the most bigoted people in this world were hyper-religious, using their religion to claim they were better than everyone else, that certain people or genders were inherently lesser.
I wondered if Mom would’ve wanted a service in a church, then. Too late now, but it was something we never discussed. When you were still in high school, you tended to think your parents would live forever.
How silly I’d been, growing up and looking up to my father, thinking he loved Mom. How stupid.
Soon enough, Jaz sat on my other side, and Oliver took the space in the pew beside Ms. Smith. Everyone who was here—which wasn’t really many people—gathered towards the front. More than three-quarters of the church sat empty. The only person in the back of the church was the pianist, who sat on a balcony with his piano directly above the main doors.
When the pianist began to play the first song, a few members in the crowd must’ve known it, for they started to sing along. My jaw was firmly clamped shut. I didn’t sing. I wouldn’t speak a single word here. Hell, I didn’t even want to be here. This… it was too hard.
After the first song was finished, the minister got up and headed to the front altar. The moment he said we were here to pay the respects to Bernadette Vega, a loving mother and a caring wife, I tuned out. This guy had no idea what my mom was like, nor did he know how shitty my father was.
Or maybe he did, and he was just trying to be nice. Maybe he was saying everything he normally said at a funeral, just switching the names and shoving my mom’s in there.
The whole thing lasted far too long. Far, far too long. Too many songs, too many readings from the bible. Frankly, I didn’t give a shit about the bible. At this point, I didn’t know if I even believed in God. My family was never uber religious, but I knew Mom believed in something. A higher power, some invisible guiding hand that set the course of our lives.
Me? I was too cynical, I think. For an eighteen-year-old, I felt sixty years older inside, like I’d seen too much, done too much, to ever let myself believe that a higher power had made my life so miserable.
I just wanted this funeral to be over. I wanted to bury my mom and be done with it. From what Oliver told me, there was a second part to this funeral, where the minister said more prayers above her casket before it was lowered into the ground, where she would be laid to permanent rest.
This sucked so much. I hated it. I hated it more than I’d ever hated anything before. I would give anything to have her breathing again, to come home and see her after school, even if she didn’t remember me, even if I was a stranger to her on her worst days. At least she’d be alive.