I wrote this Friday. Just posting it late.
This morning sleep was good, real good. Then after I shut my phone alarm off and tried to find sleep again my mom busted into my room. Her face wet with tears screaming in a high pitch tone that my older cousin died. Not being fully awake, I can only react to her tears, and the sight of my mother crying triggers something in me and I feel the tears beginning to swell in my eyes. I quickly dress and follow her up the stairs from out basement to the first floor. She sits on the edge of the sectional couch and tells me how she needs to go be with my aunt and how the rest of my family had been notified. I’m still not hearing the news, just reacting to her tears. I told her that I would watch the daycare children while she went to my aunts house to console her and being their grieving. I stayed back and in the noisiness of this house and these kids I tried to remember my cousin. I couldn’t. Therefore I can’t grieve. I feel so indifferent it’s ridiculous. And I know that I’m that I’m going to get dragged to the funeral with a bunch of mourning, and I’d really rather not. Selfish, maybe.
I’ve said it before. I think the worst thing you can do is pretend to grieve for a person you don’t know. This cousin was so distant I can’t tell you his dad’s name off the top of my head. His name could be Blue. What do I do at the funeral? Walk up to him and be like sorry for your loss cousin Blue. That’s some bullshit. What can you say to a grieving parent, to let them know you feel for them? I don’t even know what to say to my mother and she only lost a cousin. It sucks. I don’t want to seem selfish. I just don’t trust the motives of people grieving.
When I was going into my sophomore year of high school a childhood friend of mine died. At the time of his death we weren’t on speaking terms. If you’ve read this blog more than once, you will know I’m not the nicest person when I mad, and we had been beefing off and on since the 4th grade. Truth be told me were more enemies than friends. So when he died I was crushed. Just a few days before he died we on the verge of trading blows during a 4th of July party. Then when I found out he died, I was wishing he was still around, but I didn’t like him. Everyone kept trying to console me like I was some great friend to him. I felt like a phony. I couldn’t stop the tears from coming, but I knew that some of them were from guilt. I felt guilt because I’d been so nasty. And it seems like yesterday but it was 7 years ago, and I still beat myself up about it. Like I should have gotten up at the funeral and said that when he died he was not my friend. I didn’t I sat there crying. My tears were real just like everyone else. They were filled with memories both good and bad, and the realization that life is really short. Sometimes much shorter than others. Then during the course of the service another mutual friend of ours got and spoke on about his life. I know for a fact that her relationship with him was much like mine, on again off again. Yet, she stood at that podium pretending that if he had a choice in the matter that he would have chose her. I didn’t believe it even for one half of a second.
And from that moment I hated funerals, everything about them. I never go unless I the person in someway made a lasting impression on my life. I will never go to a funeral for a friend of a friend, or a distant 3 cousin, or my mother’s high school boyfriend.
I don’t plan on going to this funeral. If I do go it will only be to hold support my mother. I don’t know how close they were but it was enough to bring her to tears and, when cries I need to be there.
Standing my ground,
KD
