This was the funeral.
This was the room filled with people dealing with the loss. Asking the questions. Getting no answers. What answers could you, would you expect? He was a man who had a wife and a son and he lost his job and it all seemed useless, pointless, hopeless and so, he killed himself. There’s your answer. Which was not an answer at all.
Here was the funeral. Here was the bar after the funeral where they all gathered to drink and tell stories of the man who was now in a box, now under the ground, now covered with dirt. He was a good father. He was a good friend. He was a good driver. He will always be remembered. But always is a very long time. In that always others will go, others will feel the weight, the loss, the hopelessness and they to will end it. So, he will always be remembered rings hollow, rings false. For now,it’s fine. It’s a watch cry, a rallying point. They will sit at tables, lean on the bar, drink round after round and toast his name. He will always be remembered. His wife will sit in the corner, inert, pale, lost. She will accept the hands thrust at her, the words spilled on her. The sorrow, the grief, the understanding but, none of it will get through. She is and will remain, ten million miles away. She is trapped in a snap shot of a sea side, a hotel room, a bar table in some other place where they first met. Where they first kissed. Where they first …
Young Josiah stands at the end of the bar, hiding in plain site. Camouflaged by his age, by his awkwardness. His father’s friends move about. To the bar, back to tables, back to the bar. Now and then, one of them sees him. One of them feels him there, his heavy presence. They approach, equivocate, tell him what a great man his father was. What a good friend. What a great driver. Maybe they will share some story. Some myth…
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