It was an appropriately dreary day for a funeral. The sky was an angry looking dark grey that had opened up with an irritatingly pervasive drizzle several hours before. The rain was cold and constant and driving me crazy. I hate being cold and wet.
I had sat through the entire overlong funeral in the church and now I was standing outside by the caskets as they were being lowered into the ground getting soaked through the green wool coat of my Class A's.
I would have preferred not to be wearing a uniform I wouldn't have the right to put on in a few months but I just didn't have anything else.
So now I was stuck in the damn thing, which had been too small for me for years. I should have bought a new one years ago, but I wasn't about to pony up the money when it wouldn't last me long enough to be worth it.
As if the monkey suit wasn't bad enough, the damn black beret on my head was like a dead animal festering on top of me.
It hadn't fit me from the day they issued it to me but once again I refused to replace it, cheap though it might have been. I was acutely aware of how much it resembled a pizza hat as it soaked up enough water to make it sticky and heavy on my head.
Oddly enough, the shoes were too big rather than too small. They constantly rubbed me as I walked and I had to modify my stride to prevent them from slipping off and leaving me walking through the mud in dress socks.
I hated that damn uniform and had been very pleased with the thought that I'd never have to wear it again when I got out of the Army. So much for that.
I suppose it might seem a touch self involved, or possibly insulting, to be thinking about what I was wearing while watching both of my parents being buried. Maybe it was, but I had to think about something.
I certainly wasn't going to be glowering at everything that moved like my brother. He looked ready to chew rocks, but I couldn't really see why. Sure our parents had just died, but what was there to be so pissed off about?
My brother is two years older than me and was wearing a nearly identical uniform to mine. We were even the same rank, though that didn't really bother either of us anymore.
At one time I would have been proud to have caught up to him but I'd left crap like that behind years ago. The simple fact of the matter is the National Guard promotes slow and I had spent four years in the active Army while he was a pure Guardsman. That was the reason we were both Staff Sergeants, not my amazing aptitude or any shit like that.
For what must have been the millionth time that day I forced down the urge to put my hands in my pockets. I had the black dress gloves on; courtesy of my brother since I hadn't been able to find the ones I'd been issued. He wore a pair as well. I guess he was a bit tighter with the things he was issued than I was.
Regardless, the damn things were worthless against the rain and completely soaked through. It felt like I was wearing ice mittens. There was plenty of irony to go around that day, but most obvious to me was Brian's inexplicable rage.
Of the three children in our family, I was best known for my temper and simmering anger. Brian had used that against me when we were kids and had always displayed a more reserved temperament. It was definitely going against type that he was pissed off and I was calm. Death can affect people in weird ways I guess.
I shifted uncomfortably where I was standing and glanced over at the third of my parent's children. Kerry was my much younger sister, though she wasn't the little girl I tended to think of her as. She was all grown up now, or so she thought.
She was a college freshman nearly finished with her first year. It would be somewhere around a month until she had her finals. At that particular moment I was fairly certain that her school work was the furthest thing from her mind.
Kerry looked miserable, maybe more miserable than anyone else at the funeral. I suppose she had a right to be since it had been her parents that died.
Of course she was a girl so it was expected that she would be a teary mess and she didn't disappoint. She hadn't stopped crying since the beginning of the funeral inside the church and maybe even before that. I hadn't realized it was possible to cry for so long.
It didn't help that she was soaked to the bone too. She wore a long overcoat that covered her black dress but seemed incapable of stopping the insistent rain.
Her hands were up by her face, as they had been for far too long, and her curly long brown hair was plastered to her head and heavy with moisture. I wondered briefly if it had been foresight or indifference that had stopped her from putting on mascara.
I turned back to the priest as he droned on. I didn't hear a word he said but I wasn't exactly trying to pick up on it anyway. Funerals had never been my favorite experience. I know shocking isn't it?
I'd been to a few and it always struck me as overlong and unnecessarily weepy. Sure it's sad when someone dies but shit why do you have to gorge yourself on it?
I'm not a very emotional guy but even at the funerals I'd attended for people I barely knew I was more moved than I would have liked. I chalk it up to the use of sad music and constant reminders of how sad death is. But I guess that's the whole point of a funeral isn't it?
At some point the old man in the robes finished with whatever it was he was saying and they got on with it. No one threw themselves on the casket or dropped dirt on it or any melodramatic shit like that.
We all just watched as they were lowered into their slowly filling puddles. Side by side plots had cost an assload, but I guess it was worth it. My brother and sister certainly seemed to think so. Watching my two parents going into the ground next to each other almost made me agree.
Once the two caskets were in their final resting place there was an odd few moments where no one seemed to know what to do. We all just sort of milled about as if afraid leaving would be insulting before I finally took the initiative and turned away. I think it was appropriate that I was the first to leave, but maybe I'm reading too much into it.
I was sitting in my father's car waiting for Kerry to come back from the grave sight so we could leave. Sure I could have gone to get her but it would have meant I'd end up waiting beside her in the rain as she just stood there and stared at the ground they'd gone into. I wasn't too keen on hanging out in the rain when I didn't have to.
I didn't have any music on the radio and I didn't have much going through my head either. I just sat there and stared out the passenger window up the hill where my sister remained standing alone. A thought I hadn't had in almost a week flitted through my head again and I pushed it down. Now is definitely not the right time for that shit.
I felt like I could stare at her back all day. That's not entirely accurate; it's more like I could stare at anything all day. I guess I was still stunned. My mind was uncharacteristically blank and had been for far too long.
Truth be told there was a lot I needed to be thinking about. Our parents' death had left us with a few things to take care of and a few problems that didn't have easy solutions. None of them was pressing enough to require immediate action but still they were pretty big. Too bad I had no room in my mind for them.
Kerry finally started to make her way down the hill toward me. Brian had left with his family nearly thirty minutes ago and I had been waiting in the car at least fifteen minutes longer than that but she didn't seem to notice. She looked hollow as she pulled open the door and sort of melted into the seat beside me.
Silence enveloped us in a way that was entirely different from the silence I'd already been sitting in. Her sadness was like a weight that pushed down on me to the point that I felt a pressure in my ears as if I was underwater at a great depth.
I wondered if it was wrong of me to feel so little in comparison to how my sister was reacting as I put the car in gear and drove away from the cemetery.
Silence was a way of life for the next three days as Kerry and I moved like ghosts through our parent's house. I wouldn't have stayed there if it could be avoided but I really didn't have much choice. I had been back from Iraq for all of three weeks at that point and I didn't have anywhere else to stay.
More irony I suppose, the way my parents died so soon after I finished with my last deployment. I had spent a year in a shithole being shot at by people who by any standard deserved to live there and had come out of it untouched. Just like the previous two deployments. Less than two weeks after I got back to the real world my parents were the ones who died. As if they had been the ones in danger the whole time.
I was the one to finally break the silence my sister and I had been living in. We were sitting at the dinner table having breakfast, big bowls of cereal for both of us and coffee for her, when I looked up at her and said "You're gonna have to go back to school soon."
Kerry just sort of blinked at me for a moment before taking a sip of her steaming hot coffee.
"Finals are coming up and you've got to go back to get ready for them." It wasn't riveting conversation and in fact it was one way, but at least someone was saying something. She just kept eating as if I hadn't said anything.
"Come on Kerry enough of the silent bullshit. I know you're pretty broken up right now but you have to start thinking about the real world again."
"What makes you think I'm not?" She finally spoke. It didn't even matter to me that she was challenging my assertion as long as she had found her voice.
"Well I guess nothing." It was a lame excuse for an explanation but it was something to keep her talking, or so I hoped.
"Good," was all she said back before falling back into her silence. I sighed a bit then, exasperated with my inability to get things going. It was several long minutes before I found something else to say.
"So are you gonna go back to school soon or what?"
"No." Again with the one word answer. I rolled my eyes before I could stop it but she didn't notice. It was all I could do to keep from chewing my lip in frustration.
"Why not?"
"Because." I was really starting to get irritated with her now.
"Because is not an answer," I shot back in a tone that made my frustration known. She just looked at me blankly and sipped her damn coffee.
"When are you going back?"
"I don't know. Maybe never."
