What I Didn’t Say at the Funeral

I didn’t speak at your funeral. I sat in the second row, behind Aunt Mel and your church friends, and watched the slideshow flicker across the screen—your smile looping in grainy photos, your laughter reduced to silence. I kept my hands folded in my lap, fingers digging into my own skin to keep the tears from falling too soon.

I told them I didn’t want to speak because I was “too emotional.” That was only half true. The real reason is: I didn’t know what to say without falling apart. Or worse—without telling the truth.

Because if I had stood up there, I wouldn’t have talked about how “God took you too soon,” or how “you lit up every room.” I wouldn’t have used the clichés we all pass around like tissues at a service no one wanted to attend. If I had spoken, I would’ve told them this:

You were the storm and the shelter.

You weren’t easy. You were stubborn as hell, and sometimes unkind. You knew exactly how to twist your words to draw blood. But you also knew how to make someone feel like they mattered—really mattered—in a way that made the world less terrifying. That contradiction is what broke me most.

Do you remember that night in the kitchen? I was seventeen, angry, and full of all the wrong things. I said something awful—something I can’t forget and won’t repeat—and instead of yelling, you looked at me like I was a puzzle you couldn’t solve. Then you turned back to the stove and said, “Hurt people try to hurt people. Are you hurting?” I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I just stood there in the silence you left me, and for once, I heard myself.

I wish I had said yes.

I wish I had said a lot of things.

I wish I had told you that your humming used to calm me when I couldn’t sleep. That I still remember how your fingers felt when you brushed the hair from my forehead on the nights I had nightmares. That your laugh—loud and unfiltered—was the first sound that ever made me believe there might be joy waiting somewhere, even if I didn’t know where to find it yet.

I wish I had told you I saw you trying. Even when it was messy. Even when you failed. I saw the way you kept getting back up.

I saw you when the world didn’t.

And now you’re gone. And now I carry all the things I didn’t say like stones in my pockets. Some days, they weigh me down. Other days, I take them out and hold them in my hands, hoping that remembering is its own kind of redemption.

At the funeral, they said you were “a good soul.” They said you were “at peace.” I hope that’s true. But peace was never easy for you. You were always searching for something just out of reach—something that might finally quiet the ache in your chest. You never told me what it was. I don’t think you knew.

I wanted to tell them that I’m angry. That I feel robbed. That I still pick up the phone and forget, just for a second, that you won’t answer. That I still expect to see your car parked outside when I visit, and I still catch myself buying your favorite brand of tea at the grocery store.

I wanted to tell them that love doesn’t always look like Hallmark cards and warm hugs. Sometimes love is slamming doors, and long silences, and driving to someone’s house just to sit outside for twenty minutes, hoping they’ll see your headlights and come out.

Sometimes love is unfinished.

But maybe that’s okay.

Because what I didn’t say at the funeral, I’ll say here, even if only the wind is listening:

I forgive you.

I hope, somehow, you forgive me too.

And I love you—still. Always. In all the ways we didn’t say, but tried to show