Everything in Transit

The day of Elaine Sara Corlett's funeral, the sun was shining.

It was as if the weather was spiting the attending guests, all of who were sweltering under their thick layers of black clothes, which they used to hide their grief from the world. The sun was shining upon the congregation with insolent joy and warmth. There was not a cloud in the sky although it had rained continuously four days prior.

Had the angles decided to turn their gaze down to earth they would have been aware of an absence of goodness and kindness, which had but until a week ago graced the presence of the planet. Yet the angles dared not look down because they knew that if they did the grief that reined in one small town at present, would be so strong that it could knock them from their comfortable place on the clouds.

The angles had had their time to cry and now there were no more heavenly tears left to drop from the sky in the form of raindrops. The angles could not cry any longer. It was physically impossible.

Yet down on earth it was a different story.

In the local cemetery it reeked of grief and pain. It was an overpowering scent that could knock anybody down, and it held so much weight that it could keep you pressed to the floor unable to move.

Elaine Sara Corlett deserved her place in heaven, where her mother prayed that she would be right now. But to Katherine Torbin Corlett, who was other wise known as Kay, her sister was everywhere. Kay saw her sister's smile in the warmth of the sun, she heard her laugh whistling through the trees and she felt her presence drift around her, encircling her, using the breeze as her disguise.

Kay was the girl who had always caused embarrassment towards her family; she was the joyfully reckless one whilst Elaine was the older and selfless one. It was a comparison that Kay always had to live with, most times rather unwillingly.

Even on the day of Elaine's funeral Kay managed to plunge her own family into deeper despair and flushed embarrassment. Kay arrived twenty minutes late, hurtling down the grassy slope towards the grave of her sister, the black fabric of her second hand dress flapping behind her like a kite, on her feet a pair of grubby white slip on plimsolls and her auburn hair streaming across her face catching on her sugar glossed lips.

Kay's grey eyes found the hostile steel blue eyes of her mother as she slotted into place between her father and older brother Julian Gregory Corlett. Both in shame and respect Kay bowed her head causing her auburn hair to flow over her shoulders again and be blown into her face gently acting almost like a veil. Kay dug around in the pocket of her short blazer that she donned over the dress and found a pair of bright blue Ray Bans. With practiced delicacy she slipped them onto her nose and kept her head bowed.

She heard the sharp intake of breath from her mother as she began analyzing the completely inappropriate choice of funeral outfit. The grubby white plimsolls, the vintage dress that had probably been worn by someone else to a funeral, the insolently bright sunglasses as well as Kay's late arrival had created a decline of Kay's personal status in her mother's sharp mind.

Kay just ignored the angry glare of her mother and tugged absentmindedly at the edge of her knee length dress, which billowed out so gracefully. Elaine would have loved it. But it no longer mattered what Elaine would have loved or not loved, Kay thought. Elaine was in no place as to demand anything anymore.

The Corlett family had done what they assumed their eldest daughter, their one pride and joy, would have wanted to take place. Elaine Sara Corlett was buried in the family grave. The sweet irony was that Margaret and Robert Corlett had assumed that they would be occupying the earthy space first, and not their twenty three year old daughter who had so much to live for.

A parent should never have to bury a child.

But these were bad times, Kay thought as she studied the warm and moist earth of the family grave, into which a regal wooden coffin with large white flowers was being lowered steadily. The mouth of the Priest was moving and yet Kay heard no words. She could only hear the steady beat of her own heart pumping louder and louder in her ears.

As she watched the coffin slowly disappear, Kay could not help but feel the lump rise in her throat. She knew what had been going on behind the scenes. She knew everything and yet she couldn't tell anyone about it. The burden that she had been carrying around with her for over ten months was finally beginning to show its strain around the lines of her youthful mouth.

At barely twenty Katherine Torbin Corlett had more to deal than anyone would have thought possible and to make it even worse she was going to have to go through with it on her own. With a pang she thought about what she had left in the living room of her spacious apartment in the city and she knew that things were going to change. They had to. There was no way about it.

The coffin finally reached the bottom of the grave with a soft thump. It was as if this was a cue. The hysterics that Kay's mother had tried so hard to suppress finally reached the surface of what had been a composed face. A howl of anguish flooded out of Margaret Corlett's mouth and it was the true sound of heartbreak.

Kay found her brother Julian's hand and gripped it tightly as they stood at the foot of the grave that would now belong to Elaine Sara Corlett beloved daughter and sister, who with only twenty-three candles blown out last month, was taken away from a loving family with a cruel snatch from the great beyond.

Nobody knew where Elaine was or where she was going. Kay knew that for the next four months every living moment of the Corlett family would be dedicated to the memory of Elaine, in some vain attempt to keep her live within the family. Kay knew that even after the death of her older sister, that the attention would still belong to the girl who would now never be older than twenty-three. Elaine died young and beautiful. She was never going to feel the pain of old age, she was never going to have to grow old and watch her friends die around her. Yet despite being frozen in time, the attention would still be hers.

Even in death Elaine Sara Corlett stole the show from Kay.

If everyone knew the truth this would not be so. But Kay had integrity, even if it might be the only good quality that she possessed in her mothers eyes.

Kay knew what she had to do.