The Day I Attended My Own Funeral

**The Day I Attended My Own Funeral**

*By \[Your Name]*

---

I woke up to the scent of lilies.

Not the kind that bloom gently in the sun, but the kind pressed into bouquets—solemn, overwhelming, and final. I sat up, confused, expecting my soft blue sheets and the hum of my fan. Instead, I was lying on something stiff. Not quite a bed.

The room was cold, silent.

And everyone I knew was dressed in black.

I blinked hard.

Mom sat in the front row, dabbing her eyes with a tissue. Dad, who never cried—not even when Grandpa died—looked like someone had carved out his insides and left a hollow shell behind. My younger sister, Hana, sat stone still, her eyes glassy. She clutched a framed photo in her lap.

It was a picture of me.

I tried to speak. “Hana?”

Nothing.

I stood up, or at least tried. My body didn’t move the way I remembered. It felt…lighter, but not in a peaceful way. Like I was air. Like I wasn’t *really* there.

And that’s when I saw the casket.

It was open.

And I was in it.

---

At first, my brain scrambled for logic. This had to be a dream, or some kind of twisted joke. Maybe I’d taken something. Maybe this was a coma. But the deeper I looked—at the grief in people’s eyes, the slideshow of photos playing softly on the screen behind the pulpit, the quiet sniffles—it became harder to deny.

I was dead.

But I was still…me.

---

The funeral speaker, a woman from a local chapel I barely remembered meeting, stood up and began to talk about my life. “Elena was kind. Quiet, but thoughtful. Always helping others.” Her voice was gentle. Practiced. Impersonal.

*You didn’t know me,* I wanted to shout. *You’re reading from a script.*

Then came the friends. My childhood best friend, Naomi, stepped forward. Her hands trembled as she clutched the microphone. “I hadn’t spoken to Elena in a while,” she began, “but when we were kids, she was everything to me. Sleepovers. Doodles on homework. The way we used to sing badly in the car…”

She paused, swallowing emotion. “I guess I thought we’d always have time to reconnect. I didn’t realize we’d already had our last conversation.”

---

Time.

Everyone kept talking about *time*. How they wished they’d spent more with me. How they thought I was *okay*. How I was always *there*, so they never imagined a day I wouldn’t be.

I drifted through the room, watching it all. My coworker Brian muttered, “She always smiled, even when things were rough at work.” My college roommate, Maya, clutched a wrinkled letter I’d once written her when she was having panic attacks. “She saved me, and I didn’t even realize she was the one who needed saving.”

Their words stung.

Because I had felt alone. Invisible. Like my presence was a background hum—noticeable only once it was gone.

---

Then came the part I didn’t expect.

My sister stood up.

“I don’t know how to live in a world without her,” Hana whispered. “We didn’t always talk, and I wish I told her more—but I *saw* her. Every time I came home from school upset, she knew. She'd leave little notes under my pillow. She taught me that silence could still hold love.”

She broke down, falling into Mom’s arms.

I had never realized what I meant to her. To any of them.

---

I wandered outside, unsure if I could even leave the room. But I could. I floated through the doors, into the sunlight. Everything felt hazier out here. Like a painting that hadn’t fully dried.

A breeze moved through me.

“Am I really gone?” I whispered.

“You’re in between,” said a voice beside me.

I turned.

It was a woman—old, but timeless. Her eyes held galaxies.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Someone who once stood where you are.”

She looked at the church building. “Most never get the chance to see their funeral. You did.”

“Why me?”

“Because you were ready. But uncertain. The universe grants clarity to those it favors.”

“Am I…going somewhere?”

“Yes. But not yet. First, you must understand.”

---

Over the next hours—or maybe days, time was strange here—I followed people I loved.

I watched Mom sob alone in my room, clutching a childhood drawing I’d made of our family. She whispered, “I should’ve checked on her more.”

I watched Hana light a candle beside her bed every night and write me letters in a diary she called *Letters to the Stars*.

I watched Naomi scroll through old texts, typing and deleting messages to my ghost. She even visited my grave one night and sat silently for hours.

And I realized something.

I was never unloved. Just unseen.

Because I had hidden parts of myself too well. I had smiled when I was crumbling. Said “I’m fine” when I was exhausted. Believed no one would care to know the truth.

But they did. They *do*.

---

Eventually, the woman returned.

“Are you ready?” she asked.

“I think so.”

But as she extended her hand, I hesitated.

“What if…what if I could go back?”

Her eyes twinkled. “Most don’t ask. Why do you?”

“Because I have things to say. People to forgive. Moments I don’t want to miss.”

“And if you return…you won’t remember *everything.* Just the feeling.”

“Maybe that’s enough.”

She nodded slowly. “Very well.”

---

And then, I was falling.

Through darkness, then light.

Through the sound of my own heartbeat—louder, stronger.

And then—

I gasped awake.

In a hospital bed.

Wires. Beeping machines. A doctor shouting, “She’s back!”

Mom burst into tears beside me.

I was alive.

---

It turned out I had been found unconscious after a seizure triggered by a hidden medical condition. I was gone for three minutes. Just three. But in that space between time, I’d seen what most never do.

I’d attended my own funeral.

And now, I lived differently.

I told people I loved them.

I asked for help.

I wrote more letters, had longer conversations, and never let a moment pass without meaning it.

Because death didn’t scare me anymore.

Being *unseen* did.