Requiem

There I was. Standing like an idiot in my dirty converse and a wrinkled suit coat. I was not the example of fashion at this occasion. Not knowing if I should sit or stand, I just stood. Like a post, the less I move, maybe the more no one will notice that I'm here. I glance around the room as my family breaks down around me. It smells of formaldehyde and a freshly vacuumed rug, with a pungant after scent of some citrus disinfectant spray. Flowers had been perfectly arranged around the room and the music, soft, un-offensive and boring. Made up of light pianos and what sounds like the dustiest organ from the ruins of a Presbyterian church service. My mother, eyes closed, looked to be at peace. She doesn't look at me though. She can't look at me. For here I stand at the side of my mother's coffin. This is my mother's funeral, and I feel as though I am empty. Not particularly sad, just vacant in mind and body.

The only thing going through my mind was the school work I had left to do, and how I should've gone all the way with Jewels last week at that party. Why was I so disconnected? Was something wrong with me? My mother lays there, still, stiff and cold. Skin like plastic. Sex and the meaningless school assignments are running through my mind. My father approaches me from behind, tears welling in his eyes. Asking me if I was feeling ok, doing his best to direct his attention to me, rather than drop to his knees and curse the world. I have never seen my father cry. It is a sight no man should bare witness too. My father was strong in some ways, but was always the sensitive one of my two parents. My mother, always well put together and my dad being, well more flippant in his approach to most things. He had a kindness and venerability to him though, which is why my mother loved him. And here, next to me he tries to hide his sobs by turning away from my prying gaze. Seeing your father cry is like watching those ads for the pound. Seeing how helpless these dogs are, how broken. And the realization that not only is there nothing you can do, but that what you really want, is to just change the channel.

Walking out into the main room now, leaving the sobbing bodies in the space behind me. My girlfriend Analiz sits in the foyer. She tries to comfort me as I sit. Leaving for college in a little over two week she and I will more than likely break up. I was off to Roanoke University and she had decided on VCU in Richmond. A good school. We both knew this was coming. A faded lust welling inside us both has left our relationship shallow and hallow shadow of what it once was. Consisting of only a combination of familiarity and a bit of habitual comfort. We had been together almost 2 years, and we grew very close to each other's families. She had a sweetness to her. Sophisticated and intelleligent. She was probably ninth in over all grade point average for the school. We had just begun to grow up, and grow apart. We weren't the horny, hopelessly curious youths we were before. A lot can change in 2 years. As I sit next to her I remember my father mentioning mom's last will, which they had worked up together. It was going to leave me with a sum of close to $20,000. Though this information usually would've made anyone feel less ambivalent, in the face of such vast and obtrusive steps forward. I felt nothing. My memories with my mother were clouded. This fact left my mind with the notion that, I in fact don't want the money. It feels like I'm excepting something I do not deserve.

We all get up to leave and I kiss Analiz as she gets into her car. I follow my father back to our car and he asks me to drive. This was the worst car ride of my life. Silence followed by withheld bouts of quivering sighs and sniffles. No music, just us, the road, and the realization that this feeling may never go away. I felt nauseous. Pulling the car over to the side of the road, I vomit. Holding the door open as cars fly past my head. As I wretch I wondered if one of the car would hit me. Slipping off the road just a foot or two, just enough the hit me in the head. Crushing my skull and sending me, no taking me away from all this. I wipe my face and close the door. My dad asks if I'm ok. I pull back out into the road. Assuring him I'm fine. Am I fine?

We get back to the house now. Standing in the kitchen in silence. The lights on, almost blinding us. They seemed so bright against the granite counter top. We just stand there though, together, neither of us knowing what to do, or what to say. After a time my father walks into the dining room. He sits looking out the window, his back to me. I make my way upstairs to my room. Undressed now I stare at my naked body in the mirror. How much of me was of hers? How is that quantifiable in the face of pure unbridled confusion. The shower was hot and got me ready for sleep. Knowing that the sleep would offer some break, some calm in all this. My hands shake as I find my phone. Texting Analiz goodnight. There I lay, searching my my mind for a break. The feeling coming on stronger since leaving the funeral home that my mother is truly gone. The fictional notion that I will wake up and hear her voice downstairs. Checking the clock it is 3:14 A.M. Tossing and turning my mind wonders from one meaningless thing to another. My mother is gone forever and I can't seem to feel anything but detachment. Eventually I fell asleep though because I woke up at half passed 11. Upset with myself for sleeping in I got up out of bed and headed downstairs. My father still fully clothed had slept on the couch all night.

Getting dressed now feeling that going out would give me something to do. I didn't want to be in this house. I could hear my father rustling around downstairs and the familiarity shook me. His occasional sobs echoing up the now empty house. Never hearing her voice again calling up to me from dowstairs becomes more of a prevalent notion. Not saying a word I slipped out the back and into my car. I sped down the road. Going faster, and faster. Feeling the car's energy in my groin and chest. I got to Jewel's house. Her dad was never home so she and I would spend time together. Usually we'd smoke and have sex. She lets me into the backyard and we both sit on her porch. She and I sat in the sun not saying much. Our relationship was a carnal one. Quickly she began to exclaim how sorry she was before kissing me. In that moment I felt something again. Not the arousal you'd expect but a love. She and I had been seeing each other from time to time. She was my escape for the world, and for that I did have a kind of love for her. She was no stranger to tragedy though, mother had committed suicide when she was in middle school. She was the one that found her. I always felt kind of sorry for her, but it was now her, in fact feeling sorry for me that I felt opossition towards.

Afterwards we sat in her bed under the covers and talked about school and the prospect of college now being so close for me. She wasn't going to college herself. Her father didn't make enough for her to go and she didn't like school anyway. I think now that that is why I liked her. Everyone in my life was so serious. So goal oriented that it felt crushing. Now more than ever. She was simple, care free in a way I wasn't. So there we lay. In her tiny house talking about our futures. She then told me that she keeps a diary. One that she has had since her mother's death. It offered her peace about what had happened, telling me that I should do the same I laughed. We smoked a little after getting dressed. The day was getting on now and her dad should be home from work any minute. Standing in the doorway as I pull away. I watch her in my rearview getting smaller and smaller. None of my other friends were willing to hangout. They probably felt that I'd be too depressed to have a good time, but all I wanted was to do something that didn't remind me of the family crisis going on at home. My father and his state were going to suck the life out of me if I went home. Trying to figure out what to do with my time I took a walk at the park. It was in the center of town and there weren't many people there usually.

As I walk through the trees and down the path, I pass a woman with her dog and man with his son, but one stranger stood out to me. An old man, elderly in his posture was sitting on a large rock in a clearing. I crouched in the grass and leaned on a tree. Not wanting to be seen just staring at this man. But stare I did. He had a sadness to him and I quickly felt that this man was the only one that felt the way I did. I watched as he read from what looked like a private, small leather book. Stopping only to look up at the sun through the trees. He just sat. The peace he exuded was only surpassed by the clear melancholy tone of his presence. As I watched I began to see myself in the old man. Years from now. My father dead and many of my friends lost to me in time. I would have a family. A wife, a kid or two. And I would watch them grow older. Starting lives of their own the way my parents did. Eventually I would be an old man. Just like this man, a stranger. Unknown to anyone or to any time, sitting on a rock. I felt a deep sense of understanding at this notion. That things matter. What I do now, matters years from now. I think back to what Jewel said about a diary or journal. This old man could be reading about his life. Written down, made fact. Made physical and timeless by the written word.

Now back at the house my father is in the living room watching old family films. He sits with a bottle of wine next him. It's almost empty. He hears me enter and stands suddenly to greet me. He makes his way to me. Eyes reddened but a smile on his face as he asks "why don't you come watch with me?" I see projected there on the tv, a paused image of my mom's face. She is smiling. A smile that could cure me from the darkest of hells. A smile that until then, I thought I had forgotten. I felt my face go flush, like i has laying face down on concrete. a cold sweat began to form. My father pushes in on me, slurring his words a bit as he coaxes me into the living room. I shove him away and storm upstairs. My heart rate is through the roof and I feel like I can't breath. I pace, trying to calm down as I start to sweat more. I feel as though I have jumped into a body of cold water. The thought that the cold will eventually go away, but when it doesn't a slight panic. I feel I'm going to be sick. Just then the doorbell rings. I can hear my father talking and then footsteps up the stairs. Now in a real state of stress at who could be walking up those steps. A soft knock on the door. I open it to see Analiz standing there, a look of concern on her face. She asks to come in. As I let her in I shut the door and sit on my bed. She can tell something is wrong and she sits next to me. "I can't breath!" I exclaim. She rubs my back, something that would usually bring me comfort, something my mother did when I was a child. I feel that I am coming out of my skin. "Talk to me." She says

I turn to face her, trying not to make eye contact. "Babe, I can't do this." She stares at me and puts her hand on my face just as a tear rolls down my cheek. It is all hitting me at once. These emotions that at first seemed foreign to me, emotions I realize now I had tried to suppress were coming into being before my eyes. Without my control or my full understanding. I tell her with quivering voice, "I don't know how to do this." She grabs my hand, "You're going to find out." She says softly. "My mom is dead and I feel nothing!" I try not to shout. The tears beginning to spill out of me like a pitiful waterfall. It was then. Right at that moment that I lost it. At first it felt like a was laughing, but the tears told me otherwise. "I didn't." I pause. "The last thing I said to her was to piss off." I pleaded. "On the day she died just before school I told her to piss off..." I lean into her shoulder, " What kind of a son does that!?" Analiz now holding my head begins to tear up. "I loved her so much and now she is gone forever and she thinks I hated her." Heaving with sorrow I say, "I am a bad person. I feel that everything is coming down on me all at once." Analiz is crying with me now as we both rock in place. It is the most emotionally exposed I have ever been. She starts running her hands through my hair. "I hate myself!" I cry harder than I have ever cried in my life. Her shirt soaked in my tear now. She must hate me too I thought. Here she is, with me and what have I done with it? As I continue to cry, my father stands outside my bedroom listening in. I know because I can see the shadow of his feet beneath the door. Just standing there I know that he is aware of everything I have said. The shame overwhelms me. Analiz pulls my head up. I avoid eye contact again. Ashamed of my emotional state and vunerability, but also because I have been such an ass these last few months. I have taken for granted truly. She forces me to look at her. We stare at each other for awhile. My sobbing turned into sniffles and the subsequent tears. "I love you." She says. Staring right into her eyes I smile a little, "I love you too. I am going to miss you." My smiling turned into sorrow again as she nodded her head in agreement. We hugged. The warmth of her embrace filled me with a love that I thought may have been lost. Or at least banished from me. She has been such a big part of my life and in this moment I promised myself to never feel this way agin. To never be a cheater again. I don't deserve any of her love, and what bothers me the most is that I am sure she has some idea of my betrayal to her. Which makes me feel like I am sinking farther and farther into a pit of regret and dispair.

We both stand to leave the room. Holding hands as we move forward to open the door. There stands my father. Drunk and balling himself, sitting by my bathroom doorway. He sees us and stands immediately. Staring at me. We both smile at each other. He reaches out and we hug. "You're my son." He says into my ear. We squeeze each other tightly. As we pull away he pats me on the back and I take Analiz by the hand and walk her downstairs. As I walk her to her car she tells me that she and I should go out tomorrow night and talk. I agreed, and we kiss. I can taste the salty tears on her face. I like it. We kiss for a long time. It felt like when first started dating all those years ago. I teared up again just looking at her. I am truly going to miss this girl I thought to myself. My first love.

It is the next morning. As I make a pot of coffee I can see my father rustling around just before popping his head up from the sofa. "You're not going to leave on me today are you? He asks, his hair all messed up. I grinned pouring us both a cup of coffee. "No." I say as I carry both mugs into the living room. Handing one of them to him as he sits up. "We should watch some of those family videos?" I asked with a smile. We both sit now, mugs empty as we watch these films. My mother and I playing when I was a kid. My father spraying the hose on me as I run through the warm grass. My mother and sleeping on the couch together watching tv. "She seems so close in these." I say. "Yes, yes she does." My father says back. He turns to me. "Listen, we have to be strong. Now more than ever. I felt myself slipping off the deep end yesterday afternoon and it reminded me that even with your mother's death. A freak accident like that, I found that I can't.. That I can't forget what is important. That's you my son." He smiles with a tear as he reaches out and touches my face. He leans in. "Life is a damn mess and it takes everything that you have to stay in it, to live it. I met your mother when we were both twenty two and I fell in love with her like that!" He snaps his fingers. "We were both on a plane back to Richmond from Minnesota of all places. And little did I know that on that flight would be the love of my life. She and I started talking, at my effort I'll admit. She was not as into me as I was her. As fate would have it though over the course of those few hours she and I fell in love." He began to cry a little. "I don't know how a man like me deserved a woman like. Your mother was a great woman." He says smiling through the tears. I nod in agreement holding back tears of my own. "But the reason I tell you this, is that I don't you to think love isn't worth it." He was sniffling now. I don't want you to go through life thinking that love isn't worth it. Things happen and us losing her will shape us both, but love is always worth it son. You have to fight for it. And even if it is only for a little while, you have to cherish it. I was blessed to have the time I did with your mom, and to have you." He smiles as he finishes and I too smile. Tears filling our eyes.

It's a week later and I have begun to pack up for college. I dig through the excess of stuff in my closet when I realize that I haven't found the gift my mother had given me years back. I don't know why I hadn't thought of it before. I shout downstairs, "Dad! Have you seen my little black book?" I wait, "The leather one mom gave me?" I continue. Digging through the unimportant remnants of my childhood. Then I find it, beneath a stack of freshman year text books. There it was. "Nevermind!" I shout back. Taking it over to my desk, I sit down. Open it. Grab a pen. And I write.

Day one...