When I was in high school, my English teacher made us read a strange book. This book was guaranteed to be found on no other high school's required reading list, but it did shape a lot of who I am today. It was called "This I Believe," written by Jay Allison. It was based on the NPR series of the same name and featured 80 Americans of all walks of life. Each piece expressed the personal philosophies of the speaker and compelled us to think about our own values, and how we learn them and share them with the world.
I can't tell you the first thing about that book's contents. For all I know, Hellen Keller could have changed my life with "The Light of a Brighter Day." However, I remember only one contribution: Deirdre Sullivan's "Always Go to the Funeral." The piece explains that one must always attend the funeral when asked by a friend, family member, or loved ones. Regardless if you barely knew the guy, or if it hurt too much to get out of bed, you must always go to the funeral. As an eleventh grader, I had no idea why this was so important. Obviously, it was respectful to the mourning family and friends, but why would a person base his or her life's philosophy on attending a funeral? This was a lesson I couldn't understand until I put the "preach" to "practice." In May of 2013, I heard news that I never intended to bring me home from college. The "almost" love of my life had just lost his sister, and the funeral was to be two days after news reached me.
In the middle of finals season, running into my ex in the town he ruined for me seemed to be the last item I wanted on my summer bucket list. The next morning, as I packed up to make my trek home, I second guessed whether I should even bother with attending. "I'll make things awkward," I told myself, as visions of his family screaming and throwing programs at me cluttered my mind. It didn't take much of a minor panic attack before convincing myself that perhaps I was being selfish, and more than a little silly. The phrase from the book rang in my head until it was the only thing I could cling to, anymore. "Always go to the funeral." There were people present at the funeral who needed me, among them, a group of girls from our high school who always depended on me to keep it together. And so, I went. To settle the inevitable tension, I preemptively invited my ex to an informal dinner, at our usual hole-in-the-wall location. We met, and, to my surprise, it was just like old times. Of course, the laughter at old jokes was coated with sorrow; memories with him meant memories with his sister. Soon we were laughing until we were crying at the misadventures the three of us shared. Then the laughing-tears became not-laughing tears and all we knew to do was sit in silence, mourning over a greater loss than we expected to feel. We left with him opening my car door, as was tradition, but both of us were more broken than we started.
As I drove to my parents' house, I had to ask myself the question: Did I just make everything worse? There seemed to be a void growing the size of the two years we'd spent not speaking, and all the sobbing in the world wasn't going to make sense of it, so instead I laid in my childhood bed, with an unusually silent mind and numb demeanor. This was the way I twisted my hair back, and slicked on my Plum shimmer, less incriminating than the Red No. 5 I used to wear for every formal occasion; my mind raced from memories of accidentally transmitting that lipstick to his cheek, his neck, his mouth... and then instantly to reminders of how many times I had to buy that color because his sister always stole mine from the purse she got me for my 16th birthday. I appraised myself in the mirror, realizing how appropriate I looked for the occasion and cranked the car with all the dread in the world turning over the ignition.
Upon arrival, I saw him, standing alone outside the funeral home. I had already texted one of my old girlfriends, asking her to save me a seat with the usual group when he approached. "I know we aren't exactly speaking right now, and I know it's the last thing you want to do, but for just one day, can you be with me? I can't explain it, but I need you. I'm just kind of hoping you can pretend you need me too, today." With that, we walked into the building together, all eyes trained on us. It was a sick sort of version of how the last five years of life in my hometown had been spent. Only this time was a more painful goodbye than I'd ever imagined saying, because I knew the end of the day would not bring my former soul sister back, nor would it heal the broken relationship I used to have with the man who was now holding my hand, relying on me just to make it through another day. We sat through the hardest hour of our lives, and spent the day in complete silence, with fingers locked, refusing to let go of the only comfort either of us knew.
By the end of the day, I longed both for some miracle reversal of the damage in front of me, and still my bed in another city that knew nothing of this history and heartbreak. Neither of us truly knowing where to take things from where they were, I departed, the whole hour drive spent in a nostalgic blur. And, like ripping the bandage from a wound, I was proud of the scars remaining. Words don't quite describe the relief I felt from simply being there. The service held for his sister was beautiful, a perfect celebration of a lively young thing. There was a masochistic sort of healing to be found in those 48 hours, though it was sure to be discovered years later when listening to an old and cheerful song. I knew the undying pain we had that day would not vanish soon, but I could at least see the hope on the other side. I guess you could say that I learned the most unexpected lesson of my life. Always go to the funeral, because you never know who will need you most.
