He Found it in Death

My father had died on a Monday. He loved Mondays especially. He would rise early Monday mornings and hurry to embrace a new week, a new chance at success. He was dressed in his best suit and ready for work long before anyone else had risen from their final minutes of a Sunday stupor.
I have always hated Mondays. I like to believe that it is because I loved the weekends so much and was sorry to see them go. I like to beleive that, but I know that I hated Monday because my father loved it so much. His love for a day annoyed me more than anything else.
I found it ironic therefore that he had died on a Monday. His beloved day had betrayed him. I doubt that he would have found it ironic.
Today was Thursday. The funeral had been on Wednesday. It was a well attended affair; my father was a widely liked man. The moving speeches given by ameatuer orators almost made me forget who they were talking about. Men who hardly knew him could stand without shame and say they loved him like a brother.
His only son meanwhile, sat in the back, unmoved and impatient waiting for the reception. I felt sorry about this for only a minute. I remembered the wisdom, kindness, patience, and love he had so blindly given to me. I felt myself on the verge of tears.
I hovered on the brink of emotion for several minutes. But as the casket was wheeled past me on the way out, my sorrow went with it. I reassured myself that the man had never cared for me. Maybe it was a lie, but it was one I was willing to believe.
I left the chruch and followed the grim procession to the cemetary where my father was to be interred. I had been there before. This was where my mother was buried as well. The emotion I had successfully retained at the mass burst foward more at the sight of my mother's moss-covered tombstone. She had died several years prior, leaving just myself and my father to endure the passing years.
I thought back to the day my mother had died. She had sat at the kitchen table, the same way she always did, except this time an artery burst in her heart. At least thats what the coroner said. I didn't care what the cause was. I that I knew was that she was gone and there was nothing I could do to bring her back.
I was away from home the day she died, and I wasn't immeadeatly told. The day she died I was hiking in Maine. I was marvelling at beautiful vistas while she sank to the floor, clutching at her chest, her voice gone, completly alone. I was enjoying myself when my father arrived home and found the long dead body on the floor.
When I finally was notified, three days after my mother had died, it was by my father. He said he had left to go have a few beers with some friends and had come home to find her sprawled across the floor, lifeless and inaniamate. I cried that day. I sat in the condo in Maine, surrounded by beautiful country that no longer enticed me. I left within an hour of the phone call, and I never went back.
My mother's funeral was beautiful, in every sense of the word. The flowers were alive and glowing sharply in contrast to the red-brown casket that gleamed in the sunlight. The tree was green in the bright sunlight. The sky was the deepest shade of azure I have ever seen. The brillance of the day was too perfect for a death. It clashed with my perception of depression and made me feel so much more alone. The world went on, as beautiful as it ever had been, despite losing one of its treasures.
And here I was again, at the same cemetary, 4 years later. This time it was my father who had passed from this world. He left so peacefully that I wondered if he hadn't intercepted someone else's death. In my mind, his death shouldn't be easy, it couldn't be easy. Not for him. But there it was. He passed in his sleep in a nice retirement home. He had every amenity that he could possibly wish for, except me. I would venture nowhere near him. Ignoring him was the only way I could make him feel what I felt when he had abandoned my mother all those years ago.
The cemetary was what I thought cemetaries should be today. The whole scene was lifeless. The sky was gray and turbulent, and a light drizzle fell slowly from the sky. The tree that normally shaded my mother's grave was dead; not a single leave was left upon its strong boughs. The world seemed genuinely sad at losing my father.
I walked through the burial only because I had to. The minutes draged on in my head. The crowd of black clothes became thinner and thinner as people began to leave. I quietly conversed with the remaining few about how wonderful my father was. I was lying, but it helped other people to gather the courage to go. "If the son of this man can be so removed, surely so can we," they reasoned.
Finally, when all the mourners had left, I walked away from the site, and leaving the grave diggers to their work, headed for home.
End Part I