Photo by Mrika Selimi
Upstairs at the Funeral
Creative Nonfiction
Up close, I cannot tell if the flowers on the coffin are real or fake. The roses look real, but the lilies do not. Much like the body which is chalkily perfect, done-up for eternity. Someone has inexplicably placed a white fedora in the coffin beside the dead man as though he carelessly removed it from his head, tossed it aside for a nap. An endless nap, that is, a nap that will not give way to bleary blinking, to stretching and watch-checking, and the continuation of life.
The widow wails and sobs. Her mother photographs our hug on her iPhone. I feel the tightness of her embrace, the wetness of her face. I fruitlessly will my mind to concoct some verbal reassurance to whisper into her ear. It seems unbecoming to tell her that it’ll be okay, nothing more than an un-keepable promise. I gingerly blink the tears nestled in my eyelashes out onto my cheeks, where they sprint down to my chin, rounding the final bend of my jaw, finishing their race on my neck.
We take our seats near the back. The room is too hot, then too cold. I drape my winter parka over my knees and look around. We’re all seated auditorium-style as if awaiting a lecture. The man in the coffin will suddenly spring to life and excitedly launch into a soliloquy on psychology or calculus. I’ve become too collegiate recently, I realize, everything is not about learning and listening.
In fact, most things are about this: flesh and blood and keeping things alive. Which, of course, is a futile endeavor. Where there once was a man, there is now a body. I’ll correct myself: he was a body when he was a man, but we called him a man then and now we call him a body. He was a body that housed a man. Now, he’s an empty mansion with silent, spacious rooms and dust, because there’s always dust, but not much else that we can understand.
I think of his clothing. I’d only ever seen him in a hoodie, a t-shirt, jeans, maybe sweatpants, a sideways baseball cap, a tank top. Why couldn’t he wear that now? Why do we dress our kind up for this final event? I guess it’s not unlike a job interview or a first date. We want our loved ones to dress to impress for this eternal first impression. The only first impression that really matters if we really cut into it.
Carefully, cautiously, without pomp or circumstance, the service begins. The Rosaries are long. I feel suddenly deficient in religion, weak from my lack of this essential vitamin. I mutter what I know of the Lord’s Prayer in solidarity, in communion. I abstained from communion at the last funeral I attended, back in December. I had a nasty cold; I didn’t want to pass it on to the unsuspecting pious. I remember being darkly amused by that concept – a contagious communion. It sounds like the premise of a fable or a standup joke. I wish I had the creative juices to make it into that. Perhaps, it’s not really that promising at all, perhaps it’s just dark, hold the amusement.
The dead man’s daughter wanders up to me. She’s too young to really understand, both relieving and heart-wrenching. This is a strange mélange of emotions, this sighing release of excruciating, empathetic pain. It’s hard not to imagine this girl in five years being told of this day and wishing her fragmented memory could be made whole and clear. Now, though, she’s making silly faces and playfully hide-and-go-seeking. She climbs up into my lap, obscuring my view of the coffin and the father, who is now a body.
I crane my neck, trying to regain my view. My view of what? My view of a body, a coffin, fake flowers, banners that read “Beloved,” a fedora? Why are we all facing the coffin in the first place? Why are we watching the man who is now a body? Are we expecting something? Are we somehow still hopeful? Or are we simply draining the last dregs, sucking the water from the teabag, trying to absorb the final moments of our lives that will overlap with this man who is now a body and who will soon be Earth? Is this cathartic for those who really knew him? I feel the sudden urge to pull out my phone and interview the funeral-goers, to try to get a sense of their inner monologues, to learn how to do this right.
But back to the daughter. She squirms on my lap in her pretty white dress. Her long dark hair makes its way into my mouth. Her Mary Janes knock into my shins. Perhaps, this is the natural flow of life. The Present overtakes the Past. Just when you’re beginning to settle into somber commemoration, youth clambers up onto you, incessantly in motion, irrepressibly alive. I feel a deep, primordial urge to comfort her. She needs no comfort, though. She needs stimulation and playmates and, perhaps, a snack.
After the final amen, she takes my hand. “I want to show you something.” She leads me out of the auditorium, into the hall. Guests mingle and murmur, knocking back plastic water bottles and sharing in quiet, cordial jokes. The daughter leads me upstairs.
Up there, the roof is sloped. Sofas and coffee tables dot the room. On the walls, tchotchke cherubs, and hardcover books line wooden shelves. The place emanates stillness, solitary moments lost in thought, a close relationship with God, and all that entails. The room’s inhabitants are oblivious to this ethereal ambiance. Evidently, some collective of parents has decided to silo all the children here; they’ve baited the room with chips and iPads and a now-empty box of Sprite cans.
This, it seems, is what the daughter wanted to show me. There is running and play-fighting and squirming. There is something far more sacred than all the shelved religious tokens combined. There is sticky, energetic, sugar-fueled life.
Forgive my philosophizing, my mindless musing, but it is as though this funeral home in New Jersey is, itself, an allegory for the human condition. The determined living above the depressed dead, the Present above the Past. Oh, this is not to say that appropriate grieving is in some way unworthy of time and real effort and care. Grief is critical, important, and unavoidable. Sitting in that auditorium in solitary solidarity is certainly necessary. But so long as I am young enough to slip over to the kid’s table without too much side-eye, I think I prefer the world of the Present with all its messiness and high fructose corn syrup.
So, if the Present is up in the attic and the Past is down in the auditorium, where is the Future? The exciting part, although it is a bit of a letdown, is that no one knows where it is. But if I were hard-pressed, if you wouldn’t let me out the door until I gave you at least the shape of an answer, here is what I’d tell you. The Future is buried deep beneath interstates and nail salons and deeper still. To find her, you’ll have to zig-zag down through sewer systems and cohabit with rat colonies and hordes of roaches but continue deeper. You’ll have to go all the way into the center, impenetrable, unreachable solid inner core of the Earth. There, you’ll find a foggy window, and you’ll wipe the glass and peek through, and you’ll see.
Deep down there, inside the core of the Earth, the Future broods and naps, philosophizes and knits, and sings songs of her own creation. The words of which you’ll have to turn and follow as they stream upwards, dodging rat tails, speeding cars, roach legs, and acetone. You’ll retrace your steps, following the stream of lyrics all the way up into the mouths, into the minds of these children upstairs at the funeral.
The Author
Zora Ilunga-Reed is a native New Yorker and a current junior at Stanford University where she
is studying Philosophy and Literature.
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