Light rain had been drifting down from the heavens all morning. The dark, foreboding rain clouds above might actually be smoke, and the drizzle falling to the earth could be spurting from an emergency sprinkling system which had been set off due to it. However, the only trace of fire in the Green Hills Cemetery resided in Penelope Baker's heart, which had been smouldering for two days straight.
No amount of rain could extinguish the searing flames licking at her soul.
In the sea of black umbrellas, a singular one stood out like a beacon shining from a lighthouse. It was splashed with every colour the human eye could interpret, giving it a bright, cheery look that would be offensive on the best of days. Such an object had no business being in a cemetery, for it shattered the sweet melancholy mood that a graveyard should bask in.
The rainbow umbrella would be an item that a young child would purchase, not, you would imagine, an elderly woman who was prone to periodic bouts of dementia. Perhaps the bizarre purchase of this item was another facet of her illness, one of which Penny had no knowledge of. Dementia to Penny was the equivalent of a television to a chimpanzee – alien and beyond her understanding.
Penny tore her eyes away from the distracting umbrella – a distraction which was quite welcome – and focused them on the coffin that lay ten feet away. A reverend stood eminently at its head, bible in hand, reading from it certain passages that the parents of the deceased had requested. His voice was sombre and filled with a whimsical empathy, yet despite his kind words Penny received little comfort.
"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust," reverend Thomas uttered, finalising the verses. He closed the leather bound book and glanced around at the small gathering. Penny detected a sadness in him that emulated her own, which was strange because, from what she could gather, the man had never met Brian Jackson.
'And he never would,' she thought.
The coffin, which had been carved out of a beautiful red gum, descended slowly into the ground and the surrounding mourners struck up a symphony of sniffles, sobs and loud whimpers. Brian's father, Joseph, was so stricken by his grief that he fell to his knees and covered his face with hands that resembled a giant bear's paws, proceeding to cry into them with such a powerful display of raw emotion that Penny's heart almost couldn't handle it.
Tears slid down her face and she tightened her grip around the waist of her best friend, Jacob McCloud. It seemed as if she was faring far better than him. Both had been close friends with Brian, although Jake had known him since primary school. With twenty years of companionship suddenly flooding back from the deepest archives of his memory, Brian's death had sent Jake spiralling into a depression that no amount of coaxing could bring him out of. He had always been such a jovial person, quick to laugh and make others do likewise. It scared Penny to death to see him plunge into such a dark void, and it seemed there was nothing she could do to bring him back.
Like the moisture from the sky, Jake's eyes had been leaking all day long. Every now and then Penny would wipe at his face with a handkerchief, but streams of tears and droplets of rain would re-emerge the moment the pink cloth left his skin.
Neither of them cared enough to protect themselves from the pouring rain; the thought of securing an umbrella for both of them had never entered Penny's mind. Thus, they were saturated from head to toe. Jake's unruly hair sat slicked back from his forehead, his black suit appeared a shade darker, and his handsome face was lined with beads of rain, perhaps descending from the heavens with the sole purpose to cleanse him of his tears.
Clad in a pair of dark blue denim jeans and a black leather jacket, the only tell-tale signs that she was soaked were the streams of water from the tip of her ponytail and a similarly bathed face to Jake's.
One by one, people shuffled up to the yawning hole in the ground, paying their last respects by plucking a single white rose from the wicker basket and tossing it inside. Penny slipped her hand into Jake's and led him forward. Their steps were small and it took twice as long to cover the distance than everyone else, but in circumstances such as these there was no hurry.
They both selected a rose and shuffled up to the grave. "Goodbye," Jake said softly, letting a single rose fall from his hand. It flipped end over end and bounced off the lid of the coffin, disappearing down the thin gap that separated Brian's new home from the sheer walls of earth that surrounded it.
"I'll never forget you," Penny whispered. She got down on her haunches and dropped her rose inside, weighing her underhand toss so perfectly that the flower landed on the centre of the coffin. For some unknown reason it was important that it didn't follow a similar fate to Jake's.
Friends, family and apparent strangers quickly materialised at their sides and disappeared twice as fast, not wanting to linger so close to where Death had used the sharp blade of its scythe. This silly superstition mainly extends from the fear that ebbs through people when they sense Death's presence. Typically, when confronted by the dying or the dead, every single person finds themself plunged headfirst into the realisation that their grasp on life is tenuous and often short-lived. Each passing mourner that paid their respects could smell, see and sense the fragility of their very existence, and fleeing Brian's grave diminished the overwhelming notion that, someday, sometime, somewhere, they were all going to be in receivership of a service not unlike the one taking place for Brian Jackson.
Penny and Jake were riveted to the spot, unable and unwilling to move, letting their mutual silence and downward gazes say their true goodbyes. Jake's hand was soft and warm, and without his touch Penny knew that she would feel lonelier than she had ever felt in her life.
After enough time had passed, she turned to him, gave his hand a gentle squeeze and attempted to smile. "C'mon, let's go," she said.
"Okay," he sighed.
As if the traditional roles between dancing partners had been reversed, Penny led her grieving friend away from the newly filled plot and negotiated their path through the crowd. No one spoke. The air of morbidity was so dense that Penny thought she would choke on it. People were either walking around aimlessly or standing still nervously, unsure of what they were doing and where they were going.
What could you do?
How were you supposed to react?
The life of a twenty-year-old had been extinguished so suddenly. Nothing prepares you for this eventuation. There are no lessons taught in school that educate you on the finer points of how to deal with the loss of a loved one and the grief that comes attached.
They weaved in and out of the gravestones, each becoming bigger and more deteriorated as they exited the contemporary section of the cemetery and worked their way through the older. Headstones are rarely used nowadays; most people opt for a simple plaque with a small photograph of the deceased.
And then, as if they never existed, the decrepit, century-old monuments were left in their wake and they passed through the cast iron gates that served as an entrance to the Green Hills Cemetery. Gravel crunched underfoot as they crossed the parking lot to Penny's car. It was a run-down yellow Volkswagen, the same make and model as that lovable bug Herbie from the Disney movies of the same name. Sometimes she joked that it was the fifth Beatle, but not today.
