Earthworms have five hearts.

Acorns make oak trees, grass is green, carrots are orange, and Annette is dead.

These are all facts.

Sitting in the backseat of my mother’s Monte Carlo, rain crashing against the roof, flowing in tiny streams over the windows, I remember why I hate funerals. They’re so awkward. I can never tell whether I am supposed to be happy or sad. There is always someone crying so hard you think they’re literally going to combust, or suffocate, or drown in their tears. There is always someone else who is trying a little too hard to be optimistic and cheery and completely misses (or chooses to ignore) the fact that they are supposed to be mourning a dead person.

Annette is a dead person.
Annette doesn’t breathe.

It’s hot outside. Desperately humid and sweltering, despite the persistent rain.
Looking through the rain-streaked windows, I remember.
She used to breathe.

I used to baby-sit Annette’s daughter, my little second cousin, while Annette attended a church group on Thursday nights. This was probably about a year after she had been diagnosed with cancer. I would get there before she left, stay with her daughter until she got home, and sometimes even stay after, to put her little girl to bed.

Simple activities were difficult for Annette. She was in constant pain, even though she tried to hide it from her family, especially her daughter. Sometimes I would ask her questions about it, about cancer. She never had trouble answering them. But only rarely would I ask – some subjects were just too awkward for me. Some answers I didn’t want to know.

Deep down we all knew Annette was going to die soon. At least, much sooner than she would have had she never gotten cancer. Gotten cancer – as though she had contracted it from some skanky rest-stop bathroom, when really, it was her own body that had turned against her.

She would walk around the house in pajamas with no hair. She used to have very pretty hair, chestnut brown. Now all that remained was some difficult, unattractive stubble growing at the base of her neck. When guests came over, she put on a wig. She wears the wig to church group.

That’s a lie.
She doesn’t wear a wig to church group anymore.
She doesn’t go to church group, because she’s dead.
She is an example of the opposite of being alive.

I close my eyes and try to process this. Somehow it just doesn’t make sense to me.

What is death? I can’t even remember. I can’t wrap my mind around it. Carrots are orange, oak trees and acorns, and Annette is dead. I don’t even know what “dead” is.

Yes I do.
I know what dead is.
I just don’t want to.

We pull into the parking lot of the funeral home. It’s the night reserved for "immediate family." Annette was my cousin, my mother’s niece – but we were close enough to her to be considered immediate family.

My stepfather pulls back the driver’s seat to allow me more space to crawl out of the back of the damn two-door car as we both get drenched in hard summer rain. Mom is hobbling to the door; her knee is acting up again.

We walk in.

There are antique artifacts everywhere; chairs, desks, lamps, pictures on the walls. Everything is so old. The people these things originally belonged to are probably all long dead. Maybe that’s why they’re all sitting in a funeral home.

Makes sense.

But if you put Annette’s things in this funeral home, they would all seem relatively new. Annette was thirty-eight years old. She had a cell phone and a mini-van and two children and a life.

I called Annette’s cell phone on the way to my mother’s house. I wanted to hear her voicemail message. An electronic female voice says, “You have reached the voicemail box of,” and then, in her very own voice, Annette’s name: “Annette.”

Suddenly, hearing just that two-syllable fragment of her voice was enough to produce sentences in my head, sentences she had never even spoken in my presence. I remembered, and instantly I feared I would forget. I contemplated erasing her name from the contact list on my cell phone, but somehow it would have felt wrong. It’s still in there; electronically, she is recognized as still being alive.

I won’t tell my phone the truth.

We walk into the parlor drenched, my step-dad, mother and I. We are greeted by Annette’s mom, my aunt, who is holding it together better than perhaps everyone else in the room. She hugs us all a second longer than a regular hug, as though to remind you why you are there. Something tragic has happened, and we must be here to comfort one another. Here – have an extra long hug.

I cannot imagine how sad she must be on the inside. I cannot conceive how on earth she can possibly look so impervious on the outside.

Not even a month ago she called me on the phone, my aunt. Asked me if I could sit with Annette while she ran some errands. At this point, the cancer had taken a sharp turn for the worse, and Annette could not be left alone, in case something bad should happen.

Sure, I said, I’ll do it.

I woke up early to be there. Annette slept one and a half of the two hours I sat there, watching Matlock on television. My aunt told me to check on her from time to time, and I did. Because I didn’t know how frequently “time to time” meant, I checked on her every fifteen minutes. Each time I peeked my head into her bedroom, she was sleeping, her mouth slightly open. I would watch her for a few seconds, feeling as though I was looking in on something private, something not meant for my eyes – as though I was spying on her. But I had to make sure she was breathing – I waited for the faint rise and fall of her chest, then closed the door and returned to the living room couch.

Halfway into the second episode of Matlock, I heard a voice from her room. I got up and went in to help her. I had to help her out of bed. I had to support her by placing my hands under her arms and lifting as she stood up. I went to the closet and got her some clothes and placed them on the bed for her. She did not ask me for help to get dressed.

I couldn’t help thinking how strange it felt, to be babysitting my thirty-eight year old cousin when just months ago I had been babysitting her six year old child.

She asked me to pour her some cereal. Banana Nut Cheerios. I had to pour her milk. She couldn’t lift the carton.

Looking around the funeral parlor, I realize I don’t recognize many people there as immediate family. In fact, a few I had never met before. But I see the usual crowd of first and second cousins – we were brought into this world by the dozen, I think. I see aunts and uncles. I see flower arrangements and a guestbook, which I sign for the three of us. I see Jesus everywhere. Crucifixes, portraits, plastered on the wall. As if anyone knows what he looked like.

Annette, like her mother, was an adamant Christian. While I never told her outright I was no longer a part of “The Church” (like there’s just one), when she would ask about certain Christian books or CDs on the market, I would honestly admit to having no knowledge about them. There was a silent understanding on her part, but she never spoke about it. I was thankful for that.

Now I am standing in a room with her dead body.

A corpse. Annette is a corpse.

How fucked up is it that I’m standing in a room with the corpse of a person who used to send me text messages and ask me about Christian books? Who used to pay me to baby-sit her daughter and ask me to help her stand up by holding her under her arms while she stood?

I felt guilty for not believing in God just then. Not for my sake, but for Annette’s. I felt guilty for doubting she might be in a better place.

I hear someone whisper, “She looks so peaceful.”

No shit she looks peaceful. She’s dead.
She’s not breathing.
Apparently the inability to breathe is peaceful.
Perhaps this shocking discovery reveals that the world will only know peace when every last one of us stops breathing. Then we can all be peaceful and dead, like Annette.

Because margarine is only one atom different than plastic, and Australia is the only country that is its own continent, and apples are a fruit, and Annette is a corpse.

I am afraid to look at her casket.

I was told by my mother that Annette was going to be cremated, and I really can’t believe they’re giving her an open casket funeral. She looks nothing like healthy, pre-cancer Annette – but honestly, I didn’t really know healthy, pre-cancer Annette. It wasn’t until after she became ill that I had an excuse to contact her. Life is fucked up that way.

Eventually I force myself to steal a glance at her coffin. She is not shriveled and tiny the way you would expect a dead cancer patient to be. But Annette was skinny in life – she was a tall, skinny, healthy woman. The body lying in the casket is bloated and made-up with cosmetics. I know it is Annette, but I would rather not believe it. She is wearing her wig. It is no substitute for her natural chestnut hair. I would rather she were bald.

Before I look away, I think: Annette is dead. Annette is dead, but so is her cancer. The fucked up, overabundant cells that ended her life got themselves killed in the process. I half want to scoff at them, those idiot cells, those rapidly multiplying murderous asshole cells that killed my cousin, that turned on the body that hosted them for no good reason, only to get themselves killed in the process.

The cancer is gone.
The cancer is dead, but Annette is, too.

One day while I was babysitting her daughter, Annette was in the shower. Her cell phone was sitting on the dining room table. I think I wanted to see what time it was – when I picked up the cell phone to look at the faceplate, the tagline read, “FUCK CANCER.”

It was so sad. So desperate and angry and sad all at once. My Jesus loving cousin, the word “FUCK” screaming on the screen of the cell phone she no longer answers when I call because she can’t because she’s dead.

Fuck cancer.

I sit in one of the million year old chairs and start to leaf through a picture album on the table, but it is a post-cancer album, full of pictures of Annette, bald and in the hospital, with screws in her head, and band-aids and hospital gowns, tears and whatever the fuck else, and I wonder why the hell my aunt would put that out for people to look at.

She is standing near the casket, my aunt, talking to my mother and some other family members. When she turns around and sees me, she knows I am going to cry even before I do. Just as the tears well in my eyes, she is hugging me, kneeling down to do so because I am still sitting in the five million year old chair, and I’m crying on her shoulder. I’m crying on the shoulder of a woman who just lost her daughter, and that woman is my aunt, and my aunt is the one comforting me. And I feel angry and awkward because other people see me crying and they glance and look away and frown and pity me, and I’m angry because it’s really none of their fucking business. And suddenly, even though it feels like I could keep crying, I don’t want to anymore and I stop.

My aunt holds my hands and tells me comforting things about Annette going home to be with Jesus and, willing to hear any positive news, I hope and hope and hope she’s right. Because maybe that means Annette is alive somewhere. Maybe she’s not dead after all.

I hear booming laughter in the adjacent room, and I realize my step-father is the man who is trying a little too hard to be optimistic and cheery and is desperately trying to override the fact that he’s supposed to be mourning a dead person.

I hope I am not the person who looks as though she’s about to drown in her own tears.

And for the rest of the evening, everything seems surreal, as though my senses are lying to me. And everything I touch I think: Annette will never touch this. And everything I look at I think: Annette will never see this. And in two days I think: her body will be on fire, and pre-cancer Annette and post-cancer Annette will be consumed by flames and bad luck and a grim diagnosis, and all that will be left of her is pictures and two syllables on a voicemail message and every other gene that makes up her two children.

Because rubies are red, horses eat hay, chickens can’t fly, and Annette is dead.