I expected closure, or at least a chance to share my grief. Whatever I expected, it definitely wasn’t this. As soon as I had gathered the courage to walk through the stained glass double doors I knew she would have hated it. All of it: the people she never knew standing in black clusters crying; the dark red roses that cost more than she made all of last month at Denny’s; the fancy cheese platters. Oh god, the cheese platters. We would have cried with laughter at that particular fixture. But because fate is a sadistic b****, Lynette’s lying somewhere farther along in here in a perfectly stained rosewood box like she’s someone else. Someone who things like this happen to.


I don’t look like myself either. They wouldn’t let me wear the blue jeans she stole from me so many times that they were ours; the ones with the perfect fading and buttery soft fabric that can only come from rigorous and continual wear. Apparently death is a black tie affair. So as I stand here in the threshold the bizarreness of the situation is amplified by the fact that I’m stuffed into a ill fitting, second hand Macy’s dress. Our jeans sitting dejected in my Beemer’s trunk, in denial of the fact that they’ll never envelope her Amazon legs again.


I look around at everyone else, at their black garments which are ironed and dry cleaned to-a-t. It all feels fake to me, like we’re just all plastic dolls acting out a particularly depressing event on Barbie’s packed social calendar. And once it’s over, and the universe realizes it’s made a terrible mistake, me and Lynette could pick up where we left off on the bad 80’s movies marathon and the doll’s marionette strings can be cut. I take a deep breath; I need to calm myself down. This is happening, this is real, she’s not coming back this time. I walk further in, weaving around the people and decor that all blur together in a rush of black. I manage to avoid everyone else but her. As per usual. When I finally see her I wipe my eyes. It’s really her. I still kind of expected her to pop out of the coffin and say “just kidding, haha, you’re so gullible.” But as I get closer I know deep down that she’s not going to. Because she’s not Lynette. The pallid body has the same mess of red curls and smattering of freckles, but it’s not her. Because as I lean in to look closer, I realize I’m wrinkling my nose at the smell of chemicals, not the perfect blend of freshly mown grass, soap, and sunshine that she always smelled like. She never stopped moving, and it was lying perfectly still. My tears drip onto the plush carpet as I realize that she’s not there. All of her parts are here but the part of her that was greater than a sum of her parts is gone. She’s not here or anywhere else in this building and I shouldn’t have come.


I sprint to my car, vision blurred with tears, and back out of the lot in one long fluid motion. I have no idea where I’m going but I need to go go go go. I pass the ice cream parlor that she always wanted to stop at and I watch the happy people on the patio. Not even a week ago I was just like them, but now I feel like I will never be anything like them again. Lynette made huge ripples in my life but to everyone else she was just another person. If they had known her I wonder if they would still be oblivious to the fact that the brilliant blue sky is really a tent without one of it’s central posts; caving in from every direction.


I finally stop at the supermarket at the corner of the mini Mexican community. She always said it was her favorite place and I could never understand why but now I think I do. Because even as my head pounds in beat with the cheerful music and the bright advertisements scream at me, the world has stopped spinning. I grab a two liter of her favorite soft drink with the spanish label and as I’m checking out I grab a package of those crappy little prepackaged sugar doughnuts. The cashier looks at my red-rimmed eyes, streaked mascara and disheveled hair with concern but wordlessly nods as he checks my items out. He must have seen her obituary in the paper. Every time we came here the two of them managed to strike up a conversation despite his thick accent. I nod back and start to leave but then I turn around.


We sit wordlessly on the hood of my car, sharing the doughnuts and her soda. We listen to the music still blaring from inside the store and watch the blend of wildlife and culture that she loved so much here in the mix of open field and Mexican culture. And as the tears etch their familiar patterns down my cheeks I wipe them with our jeans and sigh. Her grass, soap, and sunshine scent lingers.