The Funeral

The rain started just before they lowered Thomas’s casket into the ground.

Honestly, that felt like something he would have found mildly inconvenient and faintly funny. He was that kind of man.

If the roof leaked, he would put a bucket underneath it and call it a “temporary indoor water feature.”

Standing there in black shoes slowly sinking into wet cemetery grass, I kept thinking grief had no business existing beside memories of his awful jokes.

And yet somehow, it did.

I stood with my hands clasped tightly together, watching the casket disappear inch by inch into the earth.

Beside me, Michael kept clearing his throat.

Mara had both arms wrapped around herself.

Noah stared straight ahead with the expression of a man using every ounce of strength he had not to break down in public.