Dearly Departed

Henry Auburn stared down at the gravesite. The dirt was fresh, fresh like the bitter winter wind. He didn’t feel it. His coat, a grey trench that hung low about his ankles, remained unmolested by it. The people present had been sparse, more so than he would have predicted. They were a collection of black dresses and black suits and blank, bleary eyes. There had been tears on half a dozen cheeks. Half of the six had been genuine.

He had moved silent among them. They had ignored his presence, fixated on the Catholic priest who spoke with gravity while his nose turned red and started to run. He’d been whip-chord thin, and his bony fingers picked at the starched collar, tugging the tiny white band at its center askew and then back again. The words were a recitation. The words were not molded for the dead man. There was a rosary around his fingers and Henry expected him to start Hailing Mary at any moment. ‘We are gathered here for the dearly departed, may our prayers send his wayward soul into Heaven and not the other way, Amen.’

The dearly departed was not Catholic.

Henry had trouble focusing on the priest. He found the kids far more fascinating. They who were still trying to understand this concept of death. One in particular, a doe-eyed brunette of maybe six, looked on with wide eyes. Lacking the inherent respect (and fear) of corpses, she had attempted to approach the casket repeatedly before it was lowered into the ground. With a child’s curiosity, she’d wanted to lift the lid and take a peek. Such whispered desires were conveyed to her mother, who grasped her tiny fingers with narrowed eyes and tightly pursed lips.

The girl’s eyes slipped to Henry. He smiled and wriggled his fingers at her. She appeared confused, cast an uncertain look up at her mother, but eventually looked back and returned the wave. She had not stopped looking at him since.

“Are there any gathered here who would say words in honored memory?”

Silence. The eyes stared. The wind whipped and rolled and continued to disrespectfully interrupt. Henry snorted, his eyes dancing in wry amusement as awkward glances were exchanged. He could almost imagine the gears turning in their heads. Was there anything left to be said? I barely knew the guy, really, my aunt dragged me along. I think he was some kind of cousin or something. Maybe second. Maybe third.

The ceremony ended. Henry watched the girl start to go, and she never stopped watching him, tripping over herself and her new, shiny dress shoes as she walked. Somehow she managed to extricate herself from her mother’s grip, and she ran up to him.

“Aren’t…aren’t you…?”

“Yes,” he said, smiling patiently.

“Did…did it hurt?” Her doe’s eyes glistened sympathetically.

“No, it didn’t hurt.”

“Why did you do it? Why did you go away like that?”

He chewed on that for a moment, thinking it over. “Sometimes we make mistakes. Some aren’t fixable. I thought that it would be better this way. I was wrong.”

He remembered the disorientation of it all. He remembered walking about the city, the way people had ignored him, more than usual. He remembered being irresistibly drawn to this place like a beacon. There was first the confusion. Then the shock. Then the remembrance of the bottle of pills and the glass of whiskey.

It had ended with bitter-sweetness of acceptance.

“…Mama says you’ll go to hell.” She lowered her voice. “But I don’t think so. I think you’re a nice man. I think that you were just very sad.”

Henry chuckled gently. “I just hope that heaven’s full of little angels like you.”

Her face lit up. Someone grabbed her jacket, and Henry listened to the sharp, chastising words, to the scolding of consorting with imaginary friends.

The wind began to touch him. To tug at him. To pull what was left of him apart. He stared as it did, still down, still at the tombstone. At his name. He thought to himself of what might have been, but was left with no one to blame. The last of the bitterness faded, and he let the wind take him where it would.