As I stood looking at these things and the other knick knacks in the study, I was amazed that these were the things my dad had left behind. Those shot glasses, that chair with a worn seat: these were the reminders of a life that had been lived. The flotsam and jetsam of existence.
We went to bed early, knowing that we had a long day ahead of us. I must have dreamed of something, but if I did I couldn’t remember it even upon first waking. Aunt Kathy was the only one who felt like breakfast; the rest of us weren’t hungry. Trevor drove up to the house barely ten minutes before we were set to head out to the funeral home. Whatever excuses we thought he’d come up with for his tardiness, we all ended up being wrong. He didn’t give any excuse.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said, and that was that.
I’d never been to a funeral, and it was strange for me to be there, looking at my dad lying in a coffin, his eyes closed, his hands crossed over his chest as if he were reciting a prayer. His skin looked unnatural; I’m pretty sure there was rouge on his cheeks. Uncle Teddy, Dad’s eldest brother, came up to me, clapping me on the shoulder and shaking his head.
“You just never know when it’ll be your turn, do ya?”
I agreed because I didn’t know what else to do; Uncle Teddy, having been satisfied in his opinion that one never knows when it will be their turn, grinned and took his tobacco breath elsewhere. A group of women was sitting together near a corner of the room, crying into handkerchiefs and the hems of blouses. I think they were cousins of my dad’s, or maybe second cousins. I vaguely remembered their faces.
When it came time for those who knew my father to say a few words, Mom was the first to speak. She gave the expected, sanitized version of their life together, dabbing her eyes with a tissue as she spoke. She stumbled in a few places, halting while she tried to think of what it was she was trying to say. When she finished speaking, she took a seat between Trevor and Zoe. Zoe gave her a comforting hug before going to the front to speak.