As I stand in front of the mirror, looking in it, I don’t see myself. I see a little nine year old girl with a tear-stained face wearing a dull black dress with freckles on her cheeks and nose and BIG amber-brown eyes staring back at me.
       A woman walking towards me, to the center of the room, resting her big grubby hands on my tiny little shoulders and squeezes too tight. “Everything will be alright,” she says.
      She too was wearing a sad dull black dress with a sad face to go with it. Then she slowly reached into her purse and took out a chained necklace with a cross and showed it to me. I looked at her skeptically through the mirror as to show her that I was NOT in the mood to wear jewelry to a funeral… even if it was a necklace I should be wearing in this particular situation.
      “You look beautiful.” my mother says as she fastened the clasp around my neck and ajustes my hair making sure that my curls came down to the cross. It took forever to get my hair perfect and I honestly don’t see what the big deal is.
       “I’m not suppose to. Not today, not now, not when someone in my family is going to be buried!” I wip my body around to face her. “I don’t want to go! I don’t care what you say or what you do!” I cried as the tears I’ve been holding back for so long suddenly come gushing out like waterfalls. I pushed her aside and jump into the covers of the bed that we shared. “I don’t want to go! I… don’t want to... ,” I sniffed and cried as I buried myself deeper into the covers.
         I shake and I sob and I cry for what seems like hours but is only a matter of minutes.
         I feel the bed drop as my mother sits down next to me and puts her hands on the spot where my shaking back is. And I slowly peek, not only because I was suffocating underneath the covers but also because I wanted to see the unhappy expression on her face…. Only to see that she’s crying too, I can feel the bed quiver as she took deep breaths to calm herself down. She cries silently for a while but sometimes the quiet cries are the worst, trust me...I know….
        “You know,” my mother whispered,” I wasn’t all that close to your great-grandmother either. The closest I could get to her is a good hard game of 500 Rum, you know that game that I’ve been playing with you for quite a while now.”
        “Yeah....?” I mumbled.
        “Well, that card game was all I had left of her and well, now she’s gone and in a better place where she is no longer suffering…. Now of course it’s sad and it’s perfectly alright to cry, but she would want us to be happy. Now she is with the people that she loves… like your great-grandfather.” she pauses for while before she opens her mouth again and says, “Now we should get going before we miss the funeral. She most definitely won’t be happy about that.”
         After a moment or two, the grandfather clock in my grandmother’s living room, stroke at noon. The funeral was at 2:30 in the afternoon and it took two hours to get there anyway so I knew we had to go now.
         As my mother excused herself in a mumble, I got out and washed off the dried tears on my face and straightened out my dress to make myself look presentable. But I still slouched and frowned and on the way to the church I cried as I watched field after field go by from the window of the car. Soon after that we were on our way to the cemetery...
        As I wait for it all to be over, I stare at the coffin in which my lovely great-grandmother laid: calm, beautiful, at peace. At least she lived a long time, most people don’t go up to 97 years old.
        I never met her husband, in fact I never met either of my great-grandfathers or anyone in the great section. Sometimes I wonder what they were like… but I guess I will never know.
       As I smell the damp grass and cheap perfume, I asked myself, ‘What am I doing here?’ I never really knew her and even by the time I was born she had lost the memory of her own children. And as I stare at her wedding ring around her neck on the golden chain, I realized that even though she never even knew me the way someone should, she always loved me and tried her best to show it; even though we had to always continue reminding her that I was family. She loved me anyway.
       After some soft words and cries followed by sniffles and more than enough, ‘I’m sorry for your loss...’  conversations, we went on our way home.
       On the car ride back it was raining harder than ever and as I watched raindrops fall on my side of the window, one, by, one; I wondered why was it that it rained when someone died? I was always told that it was God crying for the good people that died. But I knew that it wasn’t true because God couldn’t possibly be crying for every good person that died… the world would be a big, giant mud puddle.
       But when my mother ask me, “Sweetie? Is there anything you would like to do once we get home?”
       I replied without even a slight hesitation, “If it’s alright I would just like a bowl of ice cream, change into sweats and watch a long movie to take my mind off things.”
      “That’s no problem at all, Sophie. Chocolate or vanilla?”
I chuckled to myself because of my earlier thought of the world being a big, giant mud puddle.
       So I said, “Vanilla is fine.”
       But what I really wanted was to have a sunny day when I go because it is only the beginning to a new life and I don’t want God to cry.