All I could focus on was the ominous outline of the funeral casket looming behind the ordained minister who was currently trying to conduct some sort of “rehearsal” as to how the actual funeral service was going to be held, as if every step of this ceremony had to go according to plan. From the outside, I kept my composure as hundreds of people shuffled by me and muttered their most sincere condolences. Internally, all I could do was shift my focus on all of the memories I cherished. Against my better judgment, I was one of the first to approach the forsaken carrier that held the body of the woman I used to call my mother. As family members lined up behind me to look upon her lifeless face, I walked towards the casket, so slowly that I thought time must have stopped. I have never been so hyper-focused on one thing in my whole life. After what felt like a mile, I stepped past the threshold to peer into the casket.

The woman who was once suffocated by the weight of her alcoholism and burdens laid still as a rock. The blood had been drained from her body, casting a ghastly white tone. Her once rosy cheeks and lips held a blue-ish purple hue. Her shiny blonde hair that once glistened in the sun was now dull and lifeless. I reached out to touch her, not knowing what else to do. As people watched, gasps erupted and echoed throughout the room, as if I was breaking some sort of protocol by reaching out to the woman who had given me life. When my hand reached its destination, it was as if touching ice. Her once warm, soft body was now an empty shell, cold to the touch. I held on to this abandoned body for what felt like hours. I clung to the empty shell, hoping I was caught in some hellish nightmare. Anything would be better than the reality I was about to face without her.

I remember the eyes upon me, their gazes burning into the back of my skull, watching my every move, waiting for me to break down and collapse in their arms. I didn’t. I kept my composure long enough to turn around, dash to the bathroom stall around the corner in the next room, push my back up against a wall and let it catch me as I collapsed onto the concrete floor. I listened to the muted whispers crawling out from underneath the door gap.

“How tragic for her...”

“What an unfortunate thing to happen...”

What felt worse was sitting in the silence, waiting for the funeral to start, biding my time in solidarity and attempting to regain my composure. I remember feeling angry listening to other people’s sobs. I thought to myself:

How dare you cry for that woman. She isn’t yours to feel sympathy for.

Where were you when she called in the middle of the night relapsing?

Where were you when she was too weak to call for help?

You have the audacity to cry for a stranger who you knew nothing of.

Her struggles were my struggles.

I would be lying if I said I didn’t have a little residual anger still left over in me today.

The anger that spilled over into my present-day life left me broken and battered, practically shattered at one point. The anger wasn't necessarily fueled by her burdensome addiction as it was more so anger as to why she felt she couldn't ask for help. To this day, this truth is heavy enough to weigh me down on even the brightest of days. I feel guilt for letting her life slip between my fingers. If there was only more I could say, if there was only more time I could have told her to never let her spark go out, that there was still hope for recovery... But time ran out, and her spark faded into a dwindling ember before burning out to nothing, drowning in her life source of alcohol.

Eventually, I stood up and dusted myself off, wiping the stream of tears that flowed down my face like a river. I gazed at my reflection in the mirror, willing myself to stay collected before pasting on a meager smile and unlocking the door. My body was trembling so hard, I wasn’t sure I was going to make it to the church pews. In an effort to dodge multiple embraces — fearing I would collapse in their arms after all — I darted along the stained-glass windows of the church and slid into my seat, lifting my gaze up to the sunlight splayed across the glass like a friendly reminder from my angel to stay bright and strong for others who didn’t have the security blanket of my composure.

As the priest walked through and conducted the ceremony, I drifted off inside myself. There was a lump in my throat that burned from swallowing back the tears I fought back from erupting. I focused on the people around me, watching their faces as they each processed the rehearsed words. Eventually, I was announced to read the words I wrote in the sleepless nights prior to the funeral. My body was buzzing with numbness following the conclusion. The audience looked upon me with their burning eyes, as if expecting me to collapse. I conditioned myself to remain numb and composed as I regained feeling in my legs and moved down the stage into the silence mixed with weeping.

I remained lifeless for the rest of the ceremony — not looking up once, in fear of relapsing to the weakness of my heavy heart. Suddenly, upon the organ music blaring into my eardrums, her casket was removed by the pallbearers. The time fast-forwarded, and I found myself in transit to her burial place amidst a sunny hill full of other lost loved ones from people I could only imagine. I sat beneath a tent covering the hole in the ground that would never be significant enough to hold her spot in the earth. I received a rose the color of blood for my agony, placing it in the hole atop her casket with the speech I wrote, as well as a sobriety token, one of the many she received upon completion of treatment at a rehab facility but only to relapse shortly after.

I wish I could have just crawled into that hole and sobbed, away from everyone else who longed to share in my pain. When people left, I remained. I stayed for hours until her tombstone was placed. I laid there and drew words in the dirt, wondering if she knew I drew “I love you” above her resting place. I stayed and gazed into the sky and longed for the light to shine on me, knowing it was her.

This event that occurred so early on in my life taught me that life is made up of some happy moments and some sad ones. No one can have a life of just happiness, and neither is it possible to have only grief. Just like the two sides of a coin, life also gives us two sentiments: happiness and sorrow.

It is how much are we able to find happiness and how quickly we get over the sorrow that decides how we live the moments in our life. I have learned that we are who we are for a lot of reasons, and maybe we will never know most of them. Even if we do not have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there.