Daisies: Prologue

We sat in the car for what seemed like forever. I wasn’t ready to go in. I wasn’t ready to accept what had happened. My mother sat next to me, tears streaming down her face. Her fiery red hair was pinned into a low bun at the nape of her neck. Despite the ugly day, she looked beautiful.

The rain pelted the car and sounded like drums, banging on the car. They had no rhythm, just banging over and over and over again. I looked out the window towards the church, which looked deformed from the rain coming down. It reminded me of Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory, the painting with the melting clocks. The church seemed to melt with the rain on the car window. I wished it would just melt away, along with everything else. I wished it would all melt away and then I’d wake up and my father would still be alive.

Mama grabbed my hand, squeezed it and we both got out of the car. The rain felt good on my face; it washed away my tears. We walked up to the doors of the church and stared at our reflections in the window.

I wore a collared, black dress and black stockings, resembling Wednesday Addams in a way. My mother, on the other hand, wore a floor length black dress with a red belt, red was Dad’s favorite color. We had the same messy, red hair, but hers was neatly tucked up while mine was down and untamed. I was slightly taller than her, but when she turned to look at me, I felt like a small child again. She looked so beautiful compared to my awkwardly long legs, acne covered face and hair that I hadn’t brushed in a week.

She tucked my hair behind my ear, “You have his eyes.” She was right. My big, piercing green eyes were inherited from my father. Then, we opened the large, glass doors and headed into a big room full of people I barely knew.

The room was gloomy and the air was thick with sorrow, making it hard to breathe at times. Everyone came up to Mama and I saying that they were sorry for our loss, couldn’t imagine what we were going through or that we must’ve been so strong. It was all fake. I appreciated people caring enough to come to Dad’s memorial, but could they not be real for one second? Could we recognize that he was a real person and not just a dead body lying in the other room?

The doors to the actual memorial room opened and we were all ushered inside. Mama and I sat in the front row, right side of the casket. The casket, made of a dark brown wood, sat in the center of the room with candles and beautiful black and white cloth on top. We had to have a closed casket ceremony. A gunshot wound in the forehead doesn’t make for a nice looking dead body.

Nobody likes to talk about it, but my father was shot. He was walking home from work one day and someone mugged and shot him. Dad always walked in the alley behind McRae’s Tavern, a bar near his office, as a shortcut to get to the parking garage. He said it was so much faster than walking in front of the bar. One Friday night, he had to stay at work later. Walking through the alley, a man approached him, took his money and shot him between the eyebrows. Nobody heard the shot fire because the bar was so busy that night, they were having a special on their beers. The next morning, the owner of McRae’s Tavern was taking out the garbage and saw my father’s lifeless body lying on the pavement. He called the cops, but it was far too late. The murderer was never found.

Suddenly, Mama was up by the podium giving a eulogy. I hadn’t even seen her get up. She started talking, “As most of you know, I am William Cleary’s wife, Susan. He was a great husband for the 25 years we spent together and a great father to Beth for 17 years…”

I stopped listening. It was much too painful. I closed my eyes.

Maybe he isn’t really dead. Maybe I’m just having a nightmare. I pinched myself to check. No, I’m definitely awake. Maybe this is one cruel joke that everyone knows about except me. He’s going to open the casket, jump out and hug me. Everyone will yell surprise and I won’t even be upset because I’ll have my father with me. But none of that happened. He is dead. I was the one they called to identify the body because my mom was on a business trip. I saw the bullet wound. I saw him lying lifeless on the morgue table. I saw him dead.

I opened my eyes and everyone was staring at me. Apparently, I had started bawling halfway through my mother’s eulogy. She stopped talking, walked down and hugged me, like a child. Normally, I would’ve reacted the way any teenager would, pushing her off and yelling, but this felt safe. One by one, my father’s friends and family went up to tell memorable stories about him. I was supposed to go up and tell the story of when my dad first taught me how to swim, my first memory, but I didn’t. I couldn’t.

After the ceremony, which seemed to last a lifetime, I rushed out of the room and into the hall, which had tables of food lined up on the wall. My father’s favorites, fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, cornbread and other southern foods. I grabbed all the food I could carry and sat down on the floor in the corner of the room. I watched as legs walked passed me, not even noticing the small child on the floor. I saw my mother, being the social butterfly she is, walking around, making sure she thanked every single person for coming.

She’s overworking herself, I thought. Her husband just died and she doesn’t even get a moment of rest. I hope I am as selfless as her someday.

After stuffing the majority of my food into my mouth, Mama came over and plopped down on the floor next to me.

“Hey Beth, how’re you doing?” She asked, stealing some cornbread off of my plate. I shrugged and mumbled something inaudible because my mouth was full of macaroni and cheese. We laughed. Mama had the most beautiful laugh, it was like sunshine on a rainy day. The moment she laughed, I suddenly felt warmer inside. I put my head on her shoulder and we just sat there for a long while.

Eventually, we all had to walk to the gravesite behind the church. The grave was covered with a tarp to keep everything dry from the rain. My bones felt cold and my legs ached from standing for so long, but I had to do it. Mama went to the very front, distracted by the pain in my legs I didn’t notice she was waving me to come with her.

“Beth, if you would, please join me up here.” I blinked and realized Mama was staring at me, with a smile on her face. I scrambled up there.

Ever since I was young, Mama always told me that every couple has their flower. She said that every mother passed that phrase on to their little girl, until it had come to me. When reading fairy tales, we would always try to guess what flower that couple had. Snow White and her prince had Apple Blossoms. Cinderella and Prince Charming had sunflowers. The Princess and the Pea and her prince has Sweet Pea Flowers, obviously. It was a fun game we had always played, but I hadn’t understood how important it was to Mama until this moment.

Mama opened a small, dark green, velvet bag she had with her. She poured half of the contents into her own hand and the other half into mine. We scattered them into Dad’s grave.

Rose petals. Every couple had their flower. Mama and Dad’s were roses.