The first funeral
I heard the siren blaring as it passed my house. I was brushing my teeth in a rush, I’d overslept for school again. But I had my routine down to a science- I could be dressed and out the door for the bus in five minutes with teeth brushed and breakfast eaten. It wasn’t unusual for sirens to pass our house, it was a busy area, but as a second siren went blaring by, I thought that was weird. And when the repeating siren wail didn’t fade away I realized it was stopping somewhere close. I’d have to peek down the street as I waited for the bus. Who am I kidding, I thought as I rinsed my toothbrush and quick-walked to my bag- the bus is usually waiting for me. My sister will tell the bus driver I’m on my way as I fly out of the house, shoes half laced and coat over my arm, even in winter. This morning when we get to school it is buzzing and also quiet in an eerie way.
The sirens had stopped near my house, less than a mile and a left turn away. A house had burned down, thanks to static and oxygen tanks. One spark was all it took.
No one wants to talk about the fire but it’s all we can think or talk about.
And Patty had died.
“Patty?”
“That’s a mean thing to say about someone when they’re absent.”
“She’s probably just sick.”
“No, that can’t be true.”
But by the end of homeroom and first attendance, we all knew it was true. Patty, her baby brother, younger sister, and mother had all died last night in a fire last night. Only her older sister and father made it out of the house in time.
She was 16, the same as me. We were starting to be friends again, smiling at each other as we passed in the halls. Just starting to become friends again after a tiff neither of us remembered.
I changed into my swimsuit in the girls’ locker room, getting ready for my first-period gym class. My thoughts swirled as I sat on the edge of the pool, letting my feet and ankles soak in the warm water. I inhaled a deep chlorine breath and slipped in. I let the water cover me as I sank to the bottom, eyes open in the blue-green. I settled in, cross-legged on the floor of the deep end. Water filled my ears and blocked out the world as my arms floated beside me. Water whooshed over me and then the world was silent, the chemicaled water blocked out the high school antics above me on the edges of the pool. I tried to let calm overtake me, but my mind would not be silent. When I was young I wanted to grow up to be a mermaid, like Ariel in my favorite Disney movie. As I grew older I was convinced sharks lurked in reflective pool water, my brain being tricked by the absence of distinguishable noises. But today I sink to the bottom of the pool. Focusing on the emptiness around me instead of the heaviness in my chest. I am physically weightless, trying to balance my mental heaviness.
After an hour, or maybe just seconds, my best friend dove down beside me and touched my arm. I looked at him, his long hair around his face in effortless waves. He gestured upward with his thumb and chin. I pushed off the floor to follow him back to the surface.
“Are you okay?” he asked, treading water while I held onto the side and pushed my wet hair off my face.
“Yeah,” I lied, not knowing how to express my thoughts, “I’m fine.”
“Everyone line up for warm-up laps!” the gym teacher yelled, bringing us all to the other end of the pool, away from the diving boards and closer to the small basketball hoops clamped to the edges of the other end.
I didn’t know how to describe how physically heavy I felt. How foggy my mind was. Patty and I weren’t great friends. We didn’t eat lunch together. We’d never spent the night at each other’s houses.
But she’d been one of the first people to talk to me when I’d started 10th grade at my new school and the last “first start” in my Army childhood. I had been to 11 different schools since starting Kindergarten in 1989. Making friends was hard, and Patty talked to me- the new kid in a school where most people knew each other. And talked to me again the day after. That meant something. She sat in front of me in 10th grade English. And we shared 11th grade Math. And now she was gone. And I wasn’t okay. But I didn’t know that I wasn’t okay.
Later that week students were given the choice to go to the funeral. I wanted to go. Part of it was curiosity, part was mourning, and part was skipping school (with the school’s permission). My boyfriend drove the two of us with some friends to a brick church close to our houses, Patty’s and mine. We sat down in a wooden pew in the back of the church.
It was a church I’d never been to before. My Gramma Diane told me once you get three wishes if you go into a new church, like a Catholic bottle with a genie. All three of my wishes were for Patty and her family, and wishing this was a nightmare I’d wake up from.
1- Please don’t let this be true.
2- Please let them not be dead and this whole scene can vanish.
3- Please don’t let this be true.
But nothing changed when I silently repeated my wishes. No genie could fix this.
I was raised Catholic. This church felt Catholic. Stained glass windows, icons behind the altar, and two rows of wooden pews lining the center aisle. In front of the altar were three closed coffins set on metal frames draped with white cloths: Patty’s mother and baby brother in one, Patty in the middle, and her younger sister in the third one. Her sister Diane was in middle school, where my sister went to school. Our whole district shook with loss. Counselors were brought in to help, but I didn’t go see them. I didn’t need counseling, I was fine.
I took a large breath, holding it in my lungs before exhaling it out. My boyfriend looked at me a moment and then looked away, looking over the other faces like I was. He rested his hand on my leg, hoping to give me small comfort. He went to a Baptist church, and this one was nothing like the stark white walls and padded seats of his church. The smell of the tight space should be something I remember, I’d become claustrophobic years earlier, but I don’t remember smelling anything. Maybe my allergies were blocking my nose that bright February day when the snow had melted in Western NY but we all knew months of snowstorms lay ahead. Why is it so bright? I asked myself. Shouldn’t it be raining? It should be overcast and cloudy, not sunny and bright. I didn’t smell anything- not my boyfriend’s cologne that I liked, not incense from Church stations, not people so close around me.
I sat there, my boyfriend to my right, and our friends next to him. I was at the end of the pew by the center aisle, since I was the shortest. I wouldn’t block any views. My feet hung above the floor as they do in most seats, and I pointed my toes to brush the floor to keep my shoes from falling off and making a noise I was convinced would disturb the church service. I was wearing dress shoes, I knew sneakers weren’t polite for a funeral. What do you wear to a funeral? I mean, I was going back to school, so are dress pants okay? I didn’t have a black dress to wear. Did it matter? Was wearing a white shirt okay over my black skirt? Why didn’t I know any of this?
I looked around the church. There were so many people. It was shoulder to shoulder in the pews and people standing along the back and sidewalls. My cheeks burned with shame. Why was I here? Other classmates had come, better friends with Patty, and they were crying. My face was dry. What right did I have to take up space here, when I wasn’t as affected as others in that church? I gripped the pew bench beside my legs to keep myself from bolting.
I’d never been to a funeral. My grandfather died when I was 4 years old, but I didn’t go to the funeral. Now I was here for the funeral of 4 people- one I barely knew and the others I didn’t know at all. More news about the fire had come out during the week. The oxygen tanks were for her baby brother, he’d been using an oxygen tent over his crib to help him breathe. A spark of static had started the fire and because of the oxygen, the house was engulfed in minutes. I’d told myself I wanted to come to the funeral now, but what right did I have to be here?
I learned something about myself that day. I don’t cry at funerals but I cry when there is singing. “On Eagles Wings” and “Ave Maria” are two of the biggest culprits. I can sit in a pew, and look at a coffin and the “In Memoriam” pictures. I can wave to a friend and hug family with dry eyes and a sad smile. I can sit through a eulogy or a shared poem or a happy-now-sad memory. But the minute the first piano note is played, the minute a guitar chord rings out, my “ugly cry” comes out, and the deep hurt inside my body breaks through the careful facade of “I’m fine.”
I’ve been to more funerals since Patty’s when we were just 16. Some were for people older than me, like my Great-Grammas and my Grampa. Some were for friends- like a college friend I didn’t know had cancer until he died after my graduation. I planned the funeral for my husband three years ago in 2019, after he died of cancer. I went to my first funeral since my husband’s last year, for my husband’s friend.
I know now funerals are a sign of mourning, respect, and love for the person who has died. They are also a show of love and support to the people left behind. It’s a personal remembrance and a formal goodbye to someone in your life, close or otherwise. Patty’s dad and older sister were in the first row, but I couldn’t see them. If I felt numb thinking of Patty, what must it have been like for them?
I know now that I wasn’t okay, sitting in the pew with my hands gripping the seat.
I wish I could tell my 16-year-old self this. I wish I could put a hand on my younger self’s shoulder and tell her it is alright to feel sad.
My friend had died. And she was glad I came to her funeral. In a junior class of more than 300, with hundreds more people in our school, I knew her name and she knew mine.
