Fireworks

There is a moment when it hits me, I mean really hits me. It is the moment in between the last word of a speech and the small applause; it is in that second, less than a second that it truly hits me. He is gone and there is not a fucking thing I can do to ever change that.

The applause is loud and sends my ears ringing and the silence I had found such despair in is gone. The despair however has clutched itself deep into my heart and it remains there until the silence comes back to steal it away.

I know deep inside, underneath the despair. In my soul that the silence will never come back because he is gone and how can there ever be any happiness in a world without him.

As a child I would play hide and seek and always be terrified that I would be forever lost. I realise now as I touch a finger to my eye that I am forever lost. I have finally hidden well enough to never be found, and at this moment I am not sure I care.

I realise it is my turn to speak. I don’t have a speech, every time I tried to write something down emptiness poured from my brain. It was like every moment we ever shared was covered in blackness and my brain could simply not reach them.

I stand, I am shaking, people are watching me and I hate it. I hate when people stare at me, maybe dying my hair in protest of this black only funeral had been a bad idea. My hair is blue like the bottom of the ocean, my eyes are red and my heart is stained black. I stand behind the podium a centimetres away from him and I realise he does not smell.

They must have given him some sort of embalming lotion or something, I don’t know. My knees are knocking together and it is the only sound in the church, what a joke having this in a church. He hated church, he skipped church every week and smoked cigarettes in the parking lot waiting for my mother, yet here we are in church.

My hands are shaking and everyone is watching me expecting some sort of brilliant poetic wrap up of my father’s famous and tragic life. Me: the daughter, is supposed to make everyone smile with a cute childhood memory and make tears well as I say goodbye.

But no words come; I stand at the microphone my eyes locked on the casket beside me speechless. Eventually my mother comes up and guides me away apologising into the microphone. Her face is tired and she looks every bit of her forty-three years, maybe even a bit more. She is not wearing make-up and her boobs are not on display, instead she is tucked away in a large black dress with a tissue permanently clasped to her mouth as she chokes.

My mother strokes my hair and for a minute I am tired, utterly exhausted. She shakes with sobs and I am awake again. The tiredness that had gripped my eyes a second ago is gone; in its place is wakeful sadness.

I am so fucking tired.

The priest has white stuff forming in the corner of his mouth and with every word it comes closer and closer to landing on the microphone, I take a quick survey of the church and see familiar and unfamiliar faces stare back, all of them are the same. They all have a look of sadness and pity on their faces.

A camera flashes in the background and I am brought back from the verge of disappearing into my head completely. The owner of the camera and the flash is being escorted out of the small funeral home by a man dressed in all black a familiar scowl on his face.

As I turn my head back to the priest and his spit my eye catches one of vibrant blue. It makes my heart flip and my stomach turn, a small smile forms on the cotton candy lips of the first and only boy I have ever kissed.

I am not sure but I think I am going to pass out.

My heart races into my throat and everything closes in on me, the spit in the priests mouth is now sitting on the microphone staring at me daring me to run out and leave. I dig my hands into the wooden pew and take three deep breaths. I can feel my nails straining under the pressure of the wood but I don’t care, I hardly notice because he is here and he should not be here.

It has been three official days since his death, untimely the papers say at 51. I have read every article on his death that I can find but none of them give me the closure I am desperate for. Each article takes me further away from the truth I held so tightly in my heart and closer to the edge.
It has been three days since I broke my own heart and lost my father in one motion. I take a quick glance over my shoulder and he is still there watching me, I want to stand up and scream at him to leave. How could he come here after what happened?

My mother hiccups next to me and my rage is replaced by sadness, I think I am content with sadness.

It’s starting to feel familiar.