A Fate Worse Than Death
This is the worst funeral I’ve ever been to. These people should have just burned the body and called it a day. Instead, they chose to go through half a day’s worth of ceremonies for a guy who didn’t care all that much about them to begin it. And to top it all off, they’re making total asses of themselves, because that’s what they do when they get together.
This must be hell. Or maybe purgatory. I don’t believe in that God shit anyway. If there is some kind of supernatural, all-knowing power out there, it’s torturing me for a reason. Why else would I have to sit through my own funeral?
I had been biking down a city street in Philadelphia, where I had lived alone, unmarried and childless at thirty-five year. The speakers in my iPod had been turned up to block out the sounds of the relentless city. I turned a corner quickly and got clipped by the back of a truck that had been turning as well. My head and the concrete seemed destined to meet.
Even as the blood trickled out of me, I had the sense to fumble for my phone and call someone. Not 911 – I didn’t want to look like an idiot in front of strangers. I scrolled through my contact list, squinting at the cracked screen for the name of someone who could save my life. I couldn’t think of anyone in particular, so I just started calling every number. No answer.
After I died on the street, I saw the white light everyone talks about, but it did not make me feel warm and fuzzy inside. I walked up to it, wondering where exactly I was supposed to go. A booming voice said, “You are not ready for this afterlife!” As if I were in a cartoon, a glowing pair of hands thrust through the white light and pushed me backward. I found myself sitting at my funeral.
Now, sitting here in am empty pew, I watch my parents walk up to my open coffin. My mother is dressed in her Sunday best, a sage green dress suit, the skirt of which stops just below her knees. My father is wearing one of his many “I’m an important business man” suits and he has his arms around my mother. She begins to cry – loudly. I can hear stilted Italian between her sobs. I sigh. She really shouldn’t waste prayers on my soul.
“Oh God, please protect my little boy,” she says. She turns to my father. “He never thinks about safety. He should have been wearing a helmet!”
“Yes, Helen, he should have been,” my father says.
He pats her back and I catch him rolling his eyes. I jump up and stroll to my coffin to see what it is he’s disgusted with. I almost laugh when I see my lifeless body wearing an old pair of Chucks. I never thought to prepare funeral arrangements or living wills for myself, except for this one thing. I wonder who had even upheld that legal document. Probably Aunt Lily.
I glance around the church for her, and I spot her bleach blonde hair with many of my nieces and nephews. No doubt she is terrifying their little minds with the truth of what is going on here, instead of sticking to some tale about how I’m an angel, and that heaven is a giant toy store in the clouds. She means well, though. She pulls a soda bottle out of her purse and takes a swig. She’s my only kindred spirit in this whole family. If I could be getting drunk while sitting here, I would be.
Now that everyone is done staring at my body, the priest gets up on his stand to do his thing. I don’t recognize him from past funerals. He starts speaking and I can’t make out a damn word he’s saying. I was never very good with understanding accents. Or people at all, for that matter.
“MahkwassoyoungofamaanforGawdtotakehissoul…” he rambles.
My name isn’t Mock. It’s Mark. This is just too much. I need a break.
I walk down the side aisle to the back of the church and exit through the unnecessarily large wooden doors. I walk around the side of the building and stumble to a halt. Two of my uncles are standing near a dense cluster of trees, looking like they are up to no good. Which they are. I should expect no less from this pair. I have always called them my “drunkles,” as in, drunk uncles. They act like twelve year olds together, shooting off fireworks in the backyard or getting kicked out of football games. Every summer my family spends some time at the shore, and my drunkles are always painting the other’s toenails pink when one of them passes out.
My funeral is not exempt from their antics. They are smoking a joint right out there in the middle of the day. I snort with amusement. Some things never change.
I don’t try to leave the church’s property because it was the first thing I did when I had been sent here. Each time I stepped a foot onto the street, I found myself back in a church pew. I made an educated guess that I couldn’t leave this place until I had accomplished or reconciled something. Which means that I could be here for a long time. I couldn’t accomplish much in life; how was I supposed to do it while I was dead?
I walk back inside to see if the priest has ended the massacre of everyone’s eardrums. Bless his heart, he’s done. I take a seat in the back pew, expecting that my casket will now be closed and carried to the hearse. Let’s get to the cemetery so I can get on with my non-existence.
The priest announces that anyone who wishes may come up and say a few words about me. I want to stand up and protest. Isn’t there just one eulogy from one person and that’s the end of them? I didn’t know anyone who wanted to could do that.
My mother is too upset to speak so my father is the first person to get up there.
He clears his throat. “Mark was a…good son. Our only son. He always followed his own, uh, special path in life. Didn’t go to college, but he was still bright…well, smart enough to get a job at an office.”
He pauses. This is obviously a difficult task for him, because I didn’t have much of a life for him to puff up with glory.
“We will all miss him.” He steps down and takes a seat next to my mother. Very touching, Dad.
I wonder who else is going to make a fool of themselves. Certainly not Aunt Lily or one of the drunkles. They know better. I groan as one of my other aunts takes the stand. Anyone but her. She has been known to cry at cute kitten commercials.
“Mark was so sweet with his younger cousins,” she says, already dabbing at the corners of her eyes with a tissue. “He always played softball with them before Thanksgiving dinner. In the summer, he would let them paint up his face. It was adorable. Mark always had a soft side for children.”
Her voice quivers and I rack my brain for any scrap of truth in that speech. I distinctly remember being chased around the backyard by a bat-wielding eight year old cousin until I tackled him and threw the bat onto the roof of the house. As for face paint, the kids had gotten their faces painted by me, too – and it wasn’t cute. I had gotten a vasectomy at age twenty-two, for God’s sake. I hated kids.
Just as I assume this torture is over – what more can anyone else say? – Rachel, a friend of the family’s, walks confidently up to the pulpit.
“Mark may not have had a wife or family. And he didn’t exactly have a large group of friends. But he was a good person on the inside. I could tell by the way he would joke with others and make them laugh. He was just misunderstood. He was probably afraid of showing his true colors for fear of rejection from the world, and that’s something we can all relate to. He must have had some goals for his life, and had he not tragically been taken from us, I’m sure he would have accomplished them.”
I look around at all the faces. Everyone seems to be comforted by Rachel’s words. It is an easy way to write off my death. They need excuses for my pathetic life, and Rachel has just given it to them. Worse than that – much, much worse – I can see sympathy on their faces. They feel bad for me!
Doesn’t anyone know me at all?
I start to panic and I don’t like it. I’m used to floating through life, not stressing about it. I know that I’m still hanging around here because I’m supposed to learn some kind of lesson, but nothing has changed. If I can’t figure it out, I might be a ghost forever.
No one is moving. They must be waiting on some cue from the priest that it is time to close me up for good.
Then I see my college roommate, Chris, step up to the pulpit. I haven’t seen Chris in about five years. We have an understanding, an unspoken contract in which we will always be brothers to each other, even if we’re not getting together every other weekend for a football game or a beer. Chris and I never needed those things to be friends. We just were. I am anxious to hear what he has to say.
He isn’t dressed up. He’s wearing his usual uniform of slightly wrinkled jeans and a casual striped sweater. His arms grip the sides of the pulpit loosely. He is relaxed, not at all in mourning. I smile.
He takes a long look at the room, meeting almost everyone’s eyes. Then he speaks.
“Mark was an asshole.”
The room gasps. Speaking ill of the dead? In a church? Was he trying to get struck down by a lightening bolt?
He nods and continues his voice louder. “Yeah, he was a total asshole. The biggest one around. He didn’t care to hear someone’s sob story. He lied to people. He used women. He didn’t care what he looked like or what he amounted to. He didn’t care about his boss or his downstairs neighbor. He didn’t hold the elevator door or tip well or make small talk on the bus.”
I don’t even know how to gauge everyone’s reactions to this. I look at Chris for more.
“You’re disrespecting his memory by pretending he was someone he wasn’t. Mark wasn’t any of the things you just said he was.” Chris pauses and looks down for a moment. When he looks back up again, he has a grin on his face.
“Mark was a good friend to me. He was the brother I never had. We didn’t talk about our feelings or go on double dates. Mostly we just sat around and drank a lot of beer. But I knew he’d always have my back. If I ever got into trouble, he was there. We understood each other. And that was enough for Mark…just to have one person really get him.”
He looks over at my casket. “Give ‘em hell up there, Mark.” Still smiling, he walks down the main aisle and out through the back doors.
Everyone is silent. No one will look at anyone else.
I hear quiet laughter coming from Aunt Lily’s direction. I look over at my drunkles and they are wearing grins. My parents are stone, their faces struck with horror. Each reaction seems appropriate to me, and there is some beauty in the normalcy of the situation.
I think of Chris’s words and I can’t help it. I begin to laugh. Everything he said was exactly right, and I felt comforted knowing that it wasn’t all for nothing. I had made a difference to one person. That’s all that really mattered to me. I didn’t know that I had even had that goal in life until I completed it.
Outside an open window, I can hear Chris’s laughter floating inside to join in with mine, and the world around me began to evaporate into a soft, white light once again.
© Lauren E Ward 2010