What Else Could I Say?

I went to the funeral in all black, but if I were in Hong Kong or China I would have been wearing white. As I walked through the double glass doors, I ascended the ramp. My body moved methodically, mechanically up, right foot, left foot, my arms swinging softly next to me. I watched the windows pass by, cars outside circling the parking lot looking for spaces that weren't there. I parked in a space that wasn't a space, but I wasn't really there that day, so what did it matter? Once I rounded the corner of the ramp and entered the main room, I saw The Family, many of whom I didn't know, many others I didn't remember. I immediately searched for something familiar in the Funeral Home set with flowers and coffins.
"Family?" A skinny white man in a blue suit asked as I stumbled through the walkway into the showing areas. The main room is not as large as one would think, and it was almost ridiculous to have anyone standing between two rooms as a crossing guard directing traffic. The names of the families were posted on either side of the hall in large block white letters, screaming for the appropriate family to enter here and be amazed.
"Warren," I replied. He pointed to my left, but I looked to my right in search of the atmosphere that funerals have. I needed to get into the mood, I told myself. It was necessary to be somber and quiet, but I knew that my family would expect a smile and some informal explanation of where I'd been for the last two years. The name on the plate to the right was something like Smith or Jones, and they paid me no mind, my eyes searching the faces for the sorrow that I knew should accompany me into the door to the left. It was only a second's pause, a moment of time suspended in the questioning look of the skinny white funeral director and the plaque of a name I don't remember.
I walked through the doorway, saying hello to those hovering just outside the entrance and made my way quickly to the auburn hairstyle of my grandmother. She hugged me and said it was sad. She didn't look sad. She pointed out that she was wearing the gold cross necklace that my grandfather bought her for Christmas. He didn't have to spend that much money on a necklace. She wanted something plain and the cross hanging from a fishing line gold chain was encrusted with diamonds. She liked the gift, smiling at me brilliantly with the eyes of a woman who said that it was sad, but meant for other people.
"Yea." What else could I say? It was always sad and difficult, leaving those who understand death with a feeling of loss and perhaps regret. I don't know if I understand death at twenty-five, but I felt their loss and regret without my own. I hardly knew him. He was my great uncle, my grandfather's brother, my second cousins' grandfather. He was the one who used to dress up as Santa Claus and come to my grandmother's house on Christmas Eve and hand out stockings to my brothers and me. He was the father of my cousin, who was paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident. He was the husband of my Aunt Sophie who had a hunched back. He was just another funeral now, but I knew that things were more complicated because I understood what it meant for those close to him to lose him.
"Your aunt is up by the coffin. Do you want to see him?" I looked that way, up to where the flowers were, and there she stood, hugging and nodding as people gave their sympathetic responses to the sadness, her children gathered around her in a protective semi-circle. I moved toward her with my grandmother on my arm, but by the time I got to my aunt, my grandmother had been pulled aside by someone she knew, and I was on my own. I hugged the widow softly, asking how she was holding up and she replied, "Thank God for tranquilizers." I guess that sums it up.
I didn't say that I was sorry or that he was in a better place or at least he's not suffering anymore because that is what everybody says, and it never helps. I thought it best to focus on the living. Focus on the fact that she would have months and years of difficulties to get through. She hugged me harder and longer than I expected from a woman who usually patted me on the back and sent me on my way. I guess she needed all the human touch she could get. I turned from her as others approached and looked into the coffin at the emancipated form of my uncle. He had cancer. She watched him suffocate to death, and that was probably why she needed tranquilizers. I put my hand on the hand and it felt like wax. I glanced at Sophie, expecting a disapproving look, expecting her to scream that I didn't know him that well; I had no right to touch him; why was I acting as if I felt any loss at all. I was just curious to see how he felt. I had never touched a dead body before.
I went to get a coffee because I didn't know what else to do. It turned out that the coffee room was the designated Warren Smoking Room. I wanted to ask for a cigarette, but I knew that one of them would tell my parents that I had bummed one of their cancer sticks and I would never hear the end of it. They were talking about the kids at Christmas. I guess at a particular age all children are more excited about the wrapping paper and the boxes than the intended toy or outfit. I wasn't surprised to hear them speak of life and youth when death was waiting for them to rejoin the party in the other room. Is this the purpose of children? Cute Christmas stories at funerals to distract the adults from the reality of it?
"Do you have any children, yet?" One of my cousins asked. She looked about thirty-five or so, and had three children. She was telling the stories. I couldn't remember her name. I shook my head.
"Hell, no!" I didn't mean to be that emphatic. Well, maybe just a little. They looked taken aback. I had to rejoin the party because my being lost in the Warren Smoking Room would raise suspicion in my parents, who I knew had just arrived. I made excuses. I left quickly.
"Do you remember Matty?"
I stared for a moment at the woman my mother had indicated and began to shake my head. I had never seen this woman before in my remembered life. Matty seemed to be insulted by my poor memory. I wasn't sure whether to stop my head shaking and lie or shrug my shoulders and apologize for my poor memory.
"No," I said. What else could I say?
"She's your Aunt Sophie's sister." My mother seemed to be trying to jog my memory at this point, but I stood there uncomfortably shuffling my boots and smiled.
"Oh," I said. Matty walked away to see if Sophie needed anything.
"You were very young the last time she was around," my mother told me. I wondered how young, very young was, and shrugged. Young children won't remember Aunt Matty from the wrapping paper. I suppose I felt better about my lack of memory, but I stared after her anyway and tried to create a fuzzy image so that I could say, "Oh, I remember now!" But, I couldn't.
"Hey, darlin', I haven't seen you in a while!" It was my cousin Janet, my former best friend of childhood, my horse-riding buddy, my horror movie-watching companion, and finally my disapproving cousin after I turned down her offer to set me up with a fat, balding friend of her boyfriend's five years ago. She seemed to have gotten over it, but I doubted I would ever get a complimentary phone call or her complimentary phone number. She told me that she was writing a book. Everybody tells me when they are engaging in some literary feat because I am a literary person, and I care about that stuff. I have to admit that I was excited for her. I'm not writing a book. I'm writing essays on the feminist roles of Joyce's characters in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and rhetorical analyses on Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman" speech. I'm writing poetry about never having children and the concept of potential. I'm not writing a book. She cried when she killed off one of her main characters, but she didn't cry at the funeral. I wondered why. She knew Great Uncle Bob better than I did.
"I read your novella the other day," she said. I thought I saw a glimpse of mischievous evil intent in her eye. I was probably right.
"Really?" I felt my heart quicken its pace as I held my breath waiting for her to give us the run down of the plot. I had forgotten that all theses are printed and published in the Behrend Library for all to see, and my cousin worked in the Behrend Library. My parents were shocked, only because I never told them that I had written a novella, and I had certainly never told them what it was about.
"You guys have never read it?" Janet felt the need to address my parents as if she was surprised. "I can't believe you kept that from them." I was sure she could believe it, but I decided modesty was perhaps the best route to take at this point. My novella was about a lesbian coming out to her best friend, and being the people that they are, my parents would assume that I was the lesbian and my mother might have a heart attack, hence my secrecy, and their ignorance. My mother surprisingly saved me.
"I never understand what Julie writes anyway. She writes at a level far too complex for me. When she starts writing down here, then I can read her work." My mother's hand indicated that where I needed to write was somewhere below her waist.
"I thought it was really good."
"Thanks." What else could I say? Anybody responding to my work with "very good" is suspect anyway.
"Are you married, yet? David and I have been married for almost two years now. I can't believe it's been that long. We're trying for kids now." My mother beamed as if this girl was her daughter, giving her grandchildren and wrapping paper to talk about instead of the funeral and my exploits as an author who writes over my mother's five foot three head.
"No. No kids, no boyfriend, just me and my friends, and my gay roommate." My mother scowled. I felt the urge to go. I had been there for an hour and this guy wasn't even someone I knew well. He was my father's uncle, and I wanted to hug my dad and tell him that I loved him and tell him that I was sorry. Instead I hugged him and told him that I had to go. I signed the book on my way out, adding my name to the dozens of other names ending in "Warren" along the way. I thought my family amusing because there were spaces for names, addresses, zip codes and e-mail addresses, and by the time I signed the list, all of the names were one line off kilter. I also thought it interesting that the families felt the need to sign their children in. Little Billy, who is two, attended. Little Anne, who is six months, attended screaming and crying and sleeping and needing her diaper changed. Jeffery attended, who was five. Perhaps in ten or fifteen years, we'll be at another great uncle's funeral, or perhaps an uncle this time, and little Anne's parents will say, "Do you remember Julie?" And poor little Anne who will be fifteen by then will look puzzled and search her memory and wonder why she can't remember me. I'll smile and pat her arm and tell her that kids aren't supposed to remember their fourth cousins twice removed after fifteen years and save her the searching.
I looked around for the widow. It was only right to say my good-byes, and if I moved quickly I could potentially avoid any more questions about dating, marriage and children. I found her a little further back this time. The children were greeting guests to give their mother a rest.
I said good-bye to my aunt Sophie. She thanked me for coming. I told her it was no big deal and to hang in there. She balked at the "hang in there," but I meant it to be nice. Perhaps she took it as an invitation to suicide. I couldn't say, "I'm sorry" because it never helps, and I really was trying to be supportive. I guess "hang in there" didn't help much either, but what else could I say?