Vernon

Trigger Warning: This piece is about the death of my grandfather. It contains references to death, depression, suicide, and extended hospitalization. Do not read if you are particularly sensitive to any of these topics. 

I don’t know what the weather was supposed to be like.

It rained the day he died.

It rained where I was at least, all those hundreds of miles away.

It rained where I was, as I dried

my hair off. We were laughing

when we came inside, and in the silence

as I reached for my phone,

I couldn’t remember

what the laughs sounded like.

How did those jovial cackles not rupture

my ears? They were pounding,

vulnerable, on fire;

like when I pushed the tears out of my eyes they poured into the drums of my ears.

Sound was such a painful thing,

both for my ears to hear and for my collapsing esophagus to make.

It was raining

and the droplets hit the glass with the same cacophony as the static in my silence.

I wanted to type the words back, but

every sentence was wrong and when I tried to think

of a less terrifying thought to give to my mourning father, I kept thinking

about how two sets of soundwaves can meet in the same place and amplify or nullify the noise and where I would have to stand for the static of the rain to counteract the deafening silence in my own mind.

Was it the roof,

with my toes clinging to the metal gutters? Or the bottom of the pool,

the air from my lungs rising above the surface? Or maybe

enough empty pill bottles would block out the throbbing, pounding, aching thoughts.

The day of the funeral it was grey out.

Not dark and stormy, with the potential for outbursts of thunder and torrential rain,

but just

gray.

A barely noticeable backdrop for the cement funeral home.

Amigone. Amigone. Amigone Funeral Home.

Every car that wanted to be in the parade was outfitted with that little yellow flag.

Amigone. Amigone. Amigone Funeral Home.

It’s the last name of the owner, but it’s the question of a mourner.

Am I gone? Am I? I don’t know. I can’t see in the darkness of the closed casket.

Am I gone, or is it just a fallacy to expect that we’ll see blackness in the great beyond?

I am not the body I lived in, so how would I see blackness?

Am I gone, and how could I tell? Was death the moment the heart stopped beating or when my father signed the paper to turn off his father’s life support? Was it the final drifting away or the fighting against the tube in his throat?

Amigone. Amigone. Amigone Funeral Home.

I think about my grandfather signing the checks for his wife’s funeral. I imagine his short compressed strokes writing out the name on the short strip of paper,

asking the question.

Amigone. Amigone. Amigone Funeral Home.

I can’t tell what’s a sadder thought. If

I imagine it’s him asking me, or if

it’s me that’s asking.

I keep switching between the two concepts, analyzing the mileage of tears I’ll get out of ruminating on the two of them. But I can’t decide.

I think everyone’s supposed to wear black at a funeral.

I don’t know why some of them aren’t,

they just aren’t.

I mean, how hard is it to find a black suit?

Even my grandfather wore one and he can’t be bothered to stand up.

I wouldn’t be caught dead at a funeral in navy blue.

Get it,

caught dead?

Cause it’s a funeral.

And my Grandfather died.

He’s dead.

And I wouldn’t be caught

dead.

No one appreciates my jokes here.

It is a selfish act to cry at a funeral.

Every time the thought

occurs to me,

that I should grieve, I push it

down. Because what are those thoughts?

“Oh how terrible my life will be without him?” “Oh how I wish I could have given him something to make him proud of me?” “Oh how I wish he hadn’t died so that I didn’t have to spend my Saturday in this boring ceremony?”

It is terrible,

I am terrible, and everyone

can see that I am terrible. And if I cry

someone will have to come comfort me and they can’t

because how do you admit to someone that you’re only sad because of the ways it affects you?

When I want to cry,

and the selfishness presses

into the trembling tissue between my eyes;

when I can’t say more than a few words

because my mouth muscles

are connected to my eye muscles

and my eye muscles

are trying to push

the selfishness back before it drips

out of me, I am selfish.

I don’t want you to know that I won’t miss him.

I barely knew him.

You tell me stories of him, and every

one is a surprise because I didn’t know him.

His granddaughter,

who was too absorbed in playing her video games to willingly spend time with him.

His granddaughter

who wriggled out of every engagement and threw a tantrum when she couldn’t.

His granddaughter

that was too embarrassed that she never got to know him when she was younger

that spending time with him was so unbearably awkward

she never could even when she wanted to.

Cousins,

I don’t know half your names or what you do,

and I know even less if I care to know.

Everyone

who comes up to me could be a relative…

or not…

I don’t know. I wait

for my sister to clue me in. I cling

to her side for knowledge and her ease of speaking. I pass

her tissues when she cries over the casket. I pass

her tissues when she cries on the other side of the room from the casket.

It is selfish for me to cry at a funeral.