A/N: So my teacher in Journalism asked if I could write a short story for Shennanigans and submit it in. Shennanigans is a type of zine we have at the end of the year where anyone in our school can submit their artwork, stories, poems, and etc. to be published in it and this year, sadly, we only had poems, photographs, and artwork submitted. Therefore, I attempted to break into my creative flow, but I was already thinking about a movie called Out of Africa and the part in it where they drop dirt into the grave, thus... This story was born! I felt it was to depressing to be submitted, so I'm working on another one now, but upon the question of, " Why the heck don't we do that?" I got this & I hope you enjoy.

Sterilized of Death

People here, in America, like to think that death doesn’t happen. They sterilize it. They attempt to only make it happen in those clean white hospital rooms, with the machines beeping away, and the families at home, mourning the loss without being there. The children wonder, how did it happen? They never find out. They become the next generation, sitting at home, while the first go out the same way, in those clean white hospital rooms, alone. Then they cover it up and hide it away.

They leave us with a broken heart that can’t use its brain to piece together the puzzle of the fact that when a body is buried, it is dead. They end up confusing us and doing more damage then accepting it. Is the person gone? Were they really in there? I didn’t hear any hollowness in that coffin or feel the cold lifeless hands. What if they need me?

They sterilize death and hide it away, just in case. They confuse us about death and make it a fearful thing, but it is life, and the fact that they don’t let us understand it and bury the truth along with it, leaves us more afraid.

Its evil, we say, we must bury it.

We don’t know what it could do. It’ll decay and slowly dissolve, right before our eyes. So with our fear, we leave in our black clothes from the funereal, with the body still in the coffin above ground, and they wait till no one is around and all are gone home, to lay it in the coffin and bury it away, with all their lies, sterile treatments, confusion, and hidden truth.

In Germany, everyone who attends the burial grabs a handful of dirt and listens to the sickening sound of the hollowness as the dirt hits the coffin six feet below. It is drilled into their head that the person is dead the moment the sound reaches their ears and certain gloominess is left after the sound of dirt hitting hollow death.

But it works.

They heal faster after that, because the fact that the person is dead is reached into their heart and mind. They can feel it. The soft and dirty soil slowly falling from their hands. They can see it. The dirt falling down below and awkwardly landing on the coffin in a dirty mess. They can hear it. The hollow sound of death as it hits the coffin. They can taste it. It’s on their fingers, in the air, below them in the pit, and next to them in the pile where the person behind, will come forward and let sorrow wrap its fingers around their heart.

So, as I stand here, my hands shaking, looking so frail and fragile to the crowd of people standing there in their sea of black, I attempt to take the dirt. It was drilled to be sterile in me. To be feared and hated. To be buried while I am at home crying. But I am here and the coffin lies before. I am afraid, just like they made sure we would be. I am confused, just like they let happen to the families and friends and strangers before me. But, something reaches inside me and pushes me to grab that dirty piece of dirt. That handful that I must drop.

It is the need to understand.

I was close to him and the few people that had gone before me, why, I’d heard their thump, but what about mine? I do something differently. I grab my heart and slowly hold it over the deep pit. I can smell the earth coming out from the hole below. I can see it, the way life has worked all these years. The body slowly decaying and returning to that which it had once come from. Slowly, I let my heart sift out from my shaking hand, its cool grimy feeling falling into the hole. I hear the soft pit pats that my heart makes as it lands on the coffin and then I look inside to see how it settled. It lays there, a brown, dirty mess on top of the coffin and then I can feel it. It is death letting go of my heart and sweet sorrow taking hold.

I walk away feeling numb and wipe away the dirt from my hand on my black dress. So, that is why it helps. Because when you grab that dirt and let it pour out from your hand below, the dirt becomes your heart. The part of your heart that mourns for that person so hard you don’t know how you’ll live and then, you let it go. It drops down below and only that which should be buried… The regret of death taking another. The hurt of death happening. The fear of what death is and the confusion that had never been answered…Is buried.

And all that is left is the understanding that a person needs to heal from the pain and move on.