Beth.- People at a Funeral Part 3

   
     Beth, the third birthright of Albert, stands in front of his grave ten years after she had helped the groundsmen put him there. This is the first time she has been here since. She lives in California, all the way across their world growing up. Growing up, they didn't have the money to travel, so the entire world became America, and the west coast was the end of existence. Albert was more than just her father, he was something of a hero to her. Beth had uncontrollable asthma. Everything seemed to aggravate her breathing. He was always right there with the right inhaler or would quickly find a source of steam. She had suspected that he had saved her life more than 1,000 times.

     When she got the call from Bill, her brother, she fell down. He continued to speak and yet she didn't hear anything but her own horrible shrieks of grief, then her quickened breathing and tight airway. She grabbed her inhaler and used it twice. The rescue inhaler helped to get the longer term medicine into the deeper areas of her lungs. She breathed, then sprayed, they tried to breathe again. She decided that the tightness in her chest wasn't her lungs...it was her heart.

     Most of her siblings didn't like Albert very much. Beth understood why. He hadn't been there for them. He worked all the time and didn't attend many of their activities, even if he was home that day. But he was always there with an inhaler. Always.

     "So why is this the first time I have visited his grave?" she asks. Because she wasn't angry with him. The rest of her siblings hated him for reasons that were not even his fault. Reasons like their teenage pregnancy or inability to keep a job. They projected these things to her, but she wasn't the one that got hurt...not by him. He was the only person she had ever counted on. He was the only one she knew would be there. Sarah, her mother, was always in a different place. She wasn't a real mother. So Sarah got the panic attacks. Albert was there with an inhaler.

     Right now Sarah stands at the wooden box that holds her wax father. Tim, a strange person that says he's her brother, wails in the front of the room. Sarah stands next to his bed and smiles as she hugs distant relatives. One right after another. Beth remains seated on the front row, waiting for the funeral to start so that it can end. She wants to go home and never see these people again. She didn't hate her family. She was just her daddy's girl.








Sing.
Migrate.


Thanks for reading...Z

People at a Funeral- Part 2- Fish

He stands in front of a black hole in his living room, screaming into the abyss. He, Fisher; the eldest son of Sarah, shouts into his closet as if the entire reason for his anger lives in the darkness of his clothing. He screams like a child in the night, waiting for his mother to take him into her arms. He screams until his stomach wretches and he begins to gag.

...

People look over to him as he stands at the head of his father's casket. Albert had always been his first and most important hero. His father had never missed a baseball game or teacher conference. Albert had loved his only son the most of all of his children; at least the ones he knew about.

People swept through the room and across the front of his father's body at a steady pace throughout the day. He hugged so many people. He laughed and cried with them over shared memories. He will smile instead of weep for the sake of his family. He is and has always been the strong one.

Despite the attention he is getting as Albert's "Only son," he couldn't help but notice the attention Tim was getting from everyone. Tim (Albert's apparent new son), was the life of the party. He was the center of everyone's attention. He was laughing and crying and people were grabbing his head and putting it on their own.

Fisher shook off bad memories and focused on the one's he liked to remember.

Once, Albert took him fishing on the pier all night. Albert told him that he was named after this very moment in the past with his mother. He told him that his first date with Sarah was spent fishing. She was so amazed by his lack of dating prowess that she bought into what he was selling. In reality, Albert knew what he was doing. He was smarter than everybody...all of the time.

...

As a kid Fisher would fake seizures. He didn't quite know why we liked it so much, but he knew he liked the outcome. Sarah and Albert would rush to him and hold his mouth open. Later they would hold him so tight and pass him back and forth to even tighter arms. Sarah would weep over him and rock him to sleep, but for a few moments in time, he would remember his father's hard hands carry him to his crib from his mother's chest.

...

Right now, all Fish can hear is weeping from Tim. All he can see are loved ones wrapping their arms around him.





Sing.
Migrate.



Thanks for reading...Z

People at a funeral- Part 1- Sarah Smiles

Two hours into the second worst day of his life, Tim talks and laughs at the jokes of people from all over the place. They all speak to him, even if he doesn't recognize them. He wears a nice suit he bought for job interviews. He got the first job he had applied for, so this was now recommissioned as his official mourning suit. His official "you just lost your father" suit.

...

Tim sat at a desk surrounded by off-white canvas walls, listening to fingers move like music over keyboards, and phones ring and handsets drop, over and over. When he started this job, these noises were the bane of his existence. He would here them when he fell asleep and well into his dreams. Now they are just the sounds of being at work. He would describe it to you like the smell of pencils when you walk into an elementary school.

He was researching his adoption information. His adopted mother had just died three years after his adopted father. Since he was an only adopted child, he was concerned about Christmas. Tim was a creature of extreme habit. Christmas was for family and egg nog and presents. Thanksgiving was for football. Easter was for Jesus and lilacs and pastel colors. Halloween was for taking out the screen in the door to hand out candy. He couldn't think of any family left for Christmas. He had to find his original family.

...

Sarah was lying on the bed on her side listening to Albert snore. This was a sound that meant nothing to her when they married, but now every breath he takes is misery to her. She feels bad for her thoughts, but he should just die already. She was eager to get back to planning for Christmas. This holiday was for family, and she wanted her 6 children to know how strong she was for continuing the tradition without their father.

The noise from his nose rose above the ceiling and back again. He would snort and stop for a moment, then resume. He was a really loud leaky faucet. Sarah was thinking about hiring someone to saw down a Christmas tree from the back yard for her since Albert was sick when she heard the most beautiful sound she had ever heard. She heard her husband of 35 years breathe one long exhale and then silence. She waited the customary 10 seconds to rejoice. There had been too many false alarms. Then she squealed in excitement and put her mirror under his nose. Clear glass. Hurray!

The phone rings. She gathers herself and answers, "Hello, this is Sarah, who am I speaking too?" "This is Tim, your son. Don't hang up. You gave me for adoption as a baby, and I'm not mad, I am just concerned about Christmas," he says. Sarah paused while he was speaking right before she would have removed the phone from her ear to hang up on him. She heard "Christmas" and returned to her intrigue. She says, "Why Tim, good to hear from you. What draws you to contact me now, and also talking about Christmas?" He replies, "Christmas is for families and I don't have one right now and I'd like to find mine before December 10th to give me time to prepare. "What happened to your family?" she says. "Dead. Dad died of cancer and mom just didn't wake up. It was really sad. Time heals all wounds though, so here I am moving on," he replies. Sarah smiles, sets the phone on her leg and looks over at her dead husband, then to the pictures of her kids (who have always hated Christmas) on the wall. She says, "Tim, come on over for tea, we have a lot of catching up to do."

...

So here he is. Standing in his repurposed mourning suit on Christmas day at his father's funeral. He sat in the front row closest to Sarah, right next to Bill, Kelly, Beth, Terry, Julie, and Fisher. The preacher spoke about feelings and whatever these guys say, and all of Tim's brothers and sisters exchanged glances and head-shakes at him.

Sarah told him a week earlier at tea that Albert was a Christmas fanatic. That's why they lived on a Christmas tree farm. In reality, Albert hated every holiday and wished himself dead when they arrived. But Tim loved his father because of the lie. He wished he had been able to meet him alive. He knew Albert would understand the order of things. At tea, Sarah told him that she had always wanted to meet him, but couldn't find him. She told him she had never stopped loving him. He didn't know her at all, but he knew that love meant following the order of things, so he loved her too. She didn't know love because she was incapable of feeling anything for anyone else.

Tim wept at his fathers funeral because he thought there was something there to weep for.

Sing.
Migrate.



Thanks for reading...Z