As my cue was called, I made my way out of the pew. In a cold, nearly empty church, we’d never attended as a family. One my mother became obsessed with in her final years. I regretted wearing healed shoes as I stepped across the marble floor, the echo making it ever more clear how few people were present. The pews were filled by a few coworkers, my father’s parents, from out of town. And my mother’s father. As I reached the pulpit, I looked out. Not at the people, but at the church, at its circular form, at all the wooden pews circling me. Encapsulating me. Asking for an offering.
“My mother was a loving, caring woman.” I began to lie to the few eyes and many souls. “Though taken from us so soon, losing her battle to cancer, she stayed strong”. It was better that those in the crowd believed that to be true. They didn’t visit, and didn’t know she stopped speaking a couple of years prior. She stopped caring for herself, as the chemo sucked the remaining pieces of her that were sane and living. “She saw the world in a way that no one else could,” was the kindest way I could say she was crazy, “and when she could no longer say it, her eyes always told the love she couldn’t.” The first truthful words I spoke as a tear fell. One I intended to fake. Pausing briefly to look away and wipe a tear, assuring to look away from the open casket to my left.
“In loving memory”.