The Public Funeral

By: Jordan Seifert

Dedicated to: Jen. Have a happy birthday.

It was 8 AM on a Sunday morning, and I was slowly working my way out of bed and into my best attire for a sermon that I’d sleep through followed by a gathering with a group of old women and their favorite snacks. These were usually very different from my own favorite snacks.

As I unwittingly choked myself with a red striped tie, my phone began to ring. The ancient green telephone greeted me with a familiar voice. It was my best friend’s mother, and her name was Sara, but on this particular day she sounded quite different. She spoke in a calm and quiet voice and awkwardly tried to keep herself in tact as she slowly pieced together the story of how 17 hours earlier my best friend Terry had collapsed in the middle of a shopping center and died. I didn’t go to church that day.

My own father hugged me. He never hugged me. I felt guilty about sopping up the pity. It should go to his parents and his sister and brother. Never the less, I still sat there and cried and let everyone say

“Cable, he was your friend and don’t you ever forget it. He did for you what nobody else could and you just hold onto that. I don’t want you to ever let that slip away.” This was the one time I could be greedy and nobody would hold it against me. The only thing that was missing was Terry. I got no sympathy from him, none. Didn’t help he was dead, I suppose. I had few other friends, and none I really wanted at a time like this.

It was 3 days later that the funeral took place. A little late for a funeral I thought, but I had no real idea because it was my first. I finally got to wear my Sunday’s best, even if it was a Wednesday. As a kid, my soccer team had been sponsored by the same Ironside’s Funeral Home that I was currently about to enter. I could barely resist the urge to kick something out of shock, out of anger, and out of my rekindled love of soccer.

The inside was different than I’d pictured. Deep red walls offset by a green turf flooring that didn’t at all help my soccer problem. Deeply serious and comforting portraits of people and places hung from the wall with fantastic gold trimmed wooden frames that twisted and turned in beautiful patterns. I wondered if Terry would ever get to see this place. It had been a recurring thought most of my life that when you died, you just kind of stared out at whatever was in front of you until various horrors of the dirt came and ate you up. I felt like a terrific dick for thinking it at this time too.

The man who headed our reception looked down at me with a forced sadness in his eyes.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said respectfully.

“Your ceilings are pretty bumpy,” I replied. I’d been out of my mind ever since I heard that Terry was gone. I cried my eyes out but I didn’t know why. I didn’t really care, or I didn’t know if I cared. I felt angry, but not because Terry was dead. I didn’t know why I felt how I felt, so I just bottled it up. It came out in a multitude of strange ways.

I hadn’t gone to the wake because I thought it would be a waste of time and would take away from the sadness I needed to save up for the funeral. The room here was packed and I felt that maybe I’d be a little less nervous around them if I had met them in a more social setting such as the day before. My hands eagerly searched for something to grab at in the silk pockets of my suit jacket. I squinted and searched around the room, ultimately finding the coffin to be the greatest point of interest.

There he was. Terry, my best friend for my whole life, dead and stuck in an Oak box. I waved at him, keeping in line with my theory that he could see me. I said some kind words, but I wondered if being dead would let him read my mind. I didn’t want him to know what I was really thinking, so I started to contemplate the faux cracks in the vase beside me.

“Goodbye, old friend,” I whispered, and moved on realizing he wasn’t an old friend at all. He was 15.

I had to go to the bathroom. It was in the bathroom that I looked into the mirror and saw the slightest hint of green under my suit. I had just realized in my confusion, I had worn the green funeral home sponsored soccer jersey of yesteryear. That was why I could hardly breathe, not from the sadness. It was tiny and ridiculous.

I felt oddly compelled to do the wrong thing at that moment, and so, I took off my suit jacket and my dress shirt, my tie, and walked back out into the room wearing my shirt. I felt prideful, as if the care taker would walk up and say

“Thank you for representing us. Thank you.” He didn’t.

The entire funeral stopped on a dime.

Nobody laughed. Nobody cried. Everyone just stared at me, as if they were thinking

“How nice of him to represent this funeral home. It is a nice place, isn’t it?” Somebody in the back stomped down their foot, and a muffled echo went through the room. Terry’s mother finally cried.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Cable?” I didn’t know.

The funeral began. My father sat on my left side, my mother on my right, and Terry’s younger brother and sister each sat on one of my knees and covered up my odd choice of dress.

“You two, do you want to go be with your parents?”

“No, Cable. We’re perfectly content here.”

The sermon went on for a long time. I didn’t listen to every word, or even most of them. The pastor went on for ages and ages about a friend who was gone. I didn’t need to be reminded over and over and over again by a guy I’d never met. Then he addressed me.

“And Cable, this is for you too.” Suddenly, he began to unbutton his own suit jacket, and as it came undone, I could make out words on the shirt underneath.

“Happy... Birthday... Cable.”

It came flooding to me. It was my birthday. A thousand balloons of a thousand colors came flooding across the floor and everyone stood up and started to sing to me. Terry’s siblings hugged me so hard, and I hugged them back. I smiled a big toothy smile.

“Son, we wouldn’t forget about your birthday. Everyone was so shocked when you came out in that shirt. It’s almost the same gag the pastor pulled!” I didn’t say anything. I just smiled.

Then I realized I had no definite answer.

“So Terry isn’t dead,” I said, walking over to the box to arouse him.

“No,” Terry’s father called from across the room. “Terry’s still dead...”

I stopped in my tracks. My smile faded, and the color left my face, my hands. I looked down at them. I was as flush as Terry was, and at that moment I felt like dying, just as I had three days before.

Everyone gathered around me. It was the most completely impossible moment of my life.

I was given a gift. When I shredded the tissue paper from it, I was greeted with a photograph, framed in a beautiful oak frame. It was a photo of Terry and I, sitting under the oak tree in my yard that had been cut down the year before. I had completely forgotten.

I opened the card. It was in Terry’s handwriting.

“Hey Cable... Do you remember this? We were so little I figured you’d have completely forgotten about this.” I had. “I don’t know if this is from the same tree as in your yard, but we can hope, can’t we?

Your best friend, Terry.”

I thought about that statement. Can we hope? I can never hope for Terry to come back again. That flood of hope I had when they said it was my birthday, there would be no more of that. Hope was gone for him, but hope for me was still there. Hope for a better tomorrow. Hope for days like yesterday. I would make new friends.

I started to cry again. I couldn’t stop. The tears just kept coming. I had to be alone. I went outside and kicked something.