Mollie + Chester

Chapter Twenty-Two

There was a sound of someone opening the door and Chester bolted down the stairs, from Seth's room to investigate.
Xia smiled at the kitten and came inside although today her cheeriness seemed faked. It was probably something to do with today being the hardest day.
The day of Seth's funeral.
There was no smell of burnt toast from the kitchen like yesterday or boiled eggs like the day before. Mrs Mocomile had locked herself back up in her room and her muffled cries could be heard from outside her door. When Chester was padding past her room early in the morning when humans usually slept, he heard an anguished scream. Grief was tearing the woman apart like a harsh monster with no mercy. He tried to push the door open to comfort her, but it was completely shut. Mrs Mocomile had shut out the world like so many did to deal with her grief.~
Xia heard the screams now as she made her way up the stairs, biting her lip as she passed the parent's door. Nothing she could do would help the grieving mother who had cruelly been robbed of her child too early.~She opened the door to Mollie's room, finding the bed empty and Chester meowed, pushing open Seth's door to reveal his sleeping owner. Xia stood with her hand on the door knob and smiled sadly at the tiny girl asleep finally after so many days of trying. Across her chest lay a leather bound book, open three quarters of a way as if Mollie had fallen asleep while reading. The blue cartoon blankets seemed to envelop the small girl, curling around her arms and legs as if embracing her. It was as if Seth were there himself, under the covers, holding his sister and never wanting to let go. He was still protecting her from which she could not be saved.
Xia flicked the light switch, letting the room fall dark after a night of brightness and retreated, going to get Mollie's medicine ready since she knew her mother would not today.
Mollie rolled over and smiled in her sleep, her face relaxed and looked younger than ever before.
In a few minutes, she would wake from her innocence, from her magical dreams, and reality would be forced down her throat.

It was a restless sea of black outside the front of the church. Every adult in Tamwood usually attended funerals, especially the Big Nose Society ladies who would take the chance to show off their best mourning clothes and biggest black netted hats.
We pulled up into the car park an hour early but it was already full of cars. A single spot near the front of the church was left, the spot we were always given because it was known I could not walk all the way from home to community meetings and funerals.
The bustling and chatter stopped as we appeared through the car park gates and everybody's eyes flickered to us, then they looked around so they would not appear rude. Usually, I tried to catch the eyes of the starers, made the turn away quickly as the red rushed to their cheeks, but today my gaze was fixed to my shiny black shoes.
Mum held my hand as we made our way into the church and Dad trailed behind looking at his own feet like me. Loud and heavy tears still fell from Mum's eyes but she didn't try to hide them, instead she looked straight ahead at our seat right at the front on the bench where the family always sat.
I had never been to a funeral before and never thought I would. Sure, a few old people had died in our town in my life time but kids always stayed at school, or in my case at the hospital rest bite program, until their parents picked them up.
Once, I remember we were at a town meeting two days after a funeral that Seth had just gone too because the lady who died had been his year seven teacher. We sat huddled I our seats at the meeting whispering to each other because the Mayor was talking about some stupid town fair.
"It was really... I don't know, respectful?" Seth told me when I asked. "The family sat at the front and the rest of the town sat around all in black."
"At my funeral, I want everyone to wear colourful clothes," I said in my little seven year old voice.
Unlike most people who would have looked very uncomfortable at the mention of me dying soon, Seth smiled. "I will make sure that happens."
We finally made it to our seats and I slide in the aisle, moving all the way over the edge so I could hide in the corner of the room. I drew my knees up to my chest, my head just poking over the top of the backing on the bench. Mum and Dad stood at the front of the room accepting condolences from town members who had no idea what loss was.
I picked at the stitching on the hem of my black dress that Xia had helped me pick out from my cupboard. She also did my hair for me, braiding the top so it looked like I was wearing a plaited headband.~When I looked in the mirror this morning, it was as if the soul of an adult had been shoved into my kid's body. My eyes were red and blotchy and didn't look as big or round anymore and my hair was not messed up randomly as it often was. The silver locket Seth got me for my birthday rested against the lacy, black material, still empty of a photo as Seth never got around to it. Now he never would.
Xia came into my room behind me. "You look beautiful, sweetheart," she said. "So grown up."
I swallowed and didn't say anything. Seth said I grew up too fast, but how could I laugh and play with the kids outside when they hadn't experienced things I had.
Sitting tucked into the bench at the church, I wiped my eyes with the back of my hands and tried to block my nose so I wouldn't have to breathe in the smells that surrounded me. Everyone wore different flowery strong perfume which mixed with the stale and old smell of the building that had been standing since 1869 as the little gold plaque said on the front step.
I wondered how many funerals had been held here since the date it was built. How many tears had been spilt on these floors as families mourned the dead?
My Mum sat down next to me and squeezed my hand with her own tear dampened one. Dad sat down next to her, staring glassy eyed out the stained glass window as the man standing at the front of the room in an expensive suit began to talk.
There was a pounding noise in my ears, kinda like when you put a shell to your ear and try to hear the ocean. I tried covering my ears to make the sound go away but that just made it worse. Nobody took any notice of me as I closed myself away from the funeral happening right in front of me. Mum didn't look away from the front of the room and Dad didn't look away from the coloured window that forced the light into the centre of the church.
The man up the front said something else and was replaced with one of Seth's friends from high school. Ky had changed heaps since the last time I saw him which was at his and Seth's high school graduation almost a year ago. He used to have really long hair that he could tie up in a ponytail at the back of his neck and always wore a faded baseball cap. He was not from Tamwood, but the next town over and went to university in the city. Now, his hair was cleanly cut so it was only a few millimetres in length and he wore a fancy black suit and tie.
I sat up a little bit to listen to what would be said.
"I haven't seen Seth for months but before that, I knew him for thirteen years. I know that seems like a long time, and it is, but I don't want to spend my time up here talking about our time together. I want to talk about Seth and the one person he lived for: his sister." When Ky said that, he looked at me and winked. For a second, he almost seemed like the same Ky had spent hours locked in Seth's room with him, while I sat outside the door with my ear pressed up against the wood trying to hear what they were saying.
Ky began talking again. "Even before Mollie was five, Seth's life revolved around her. Sure, there was that brief moment when he thought she was an alien, we both thought that, but after that, he changed to fit her into his life.
"Most eight-year-old boys, myself included, spent the days riding our bikes and racing down the streets after school before we had to come inside. Seth would watch in the park from the swings as he pushed Mollie back and forth making her laugh.
"Most eleven-year-old boys lock themselves inside, playing video games for hours and hours, clocking game after game after game. Seth would invite me over to play his video games, but he always let Mollie have a controller too. At his house it was always us too and a three-year-old shooting zombies and driving race cars until I left.
"Most teenagers in their final years of school go out to parties and play their music on full blast, annoying the neighbours as much as possible. But Seth stayed home most nights to spend time with his little sister, taking her out for ice-cream and arranging her dolls with her and writing her bedtime stories to scare away the monsters.
"So basically, I want to say: Seth is not normal. We all know his life has never been a normal one. But he didn't care. All Seth cared about was writing a good story, having fun and making his sister laugh.
"I know today is sad, that is an under-statement. I know that Seth was too young and had his entire life ahead of him. I know that a tragic accident had cut short the life of a person who did not deserve to die. But even though Seth only lived until eighteen, he lived more than any of us.
"If Seth were here right now he would tell me... Us to stop worrying about a future without him and remember the past we had with him."
As Ky continued to talk, I tried to do exactly what Seth wanted. I imagined all my thoughts about tomorrow and how Seth would not be there with me were fading and I replaced them with memories of the past.
I saw images of Seth and I on the swings at the park, trying to get higher than one and other. There was us in the local swimming pool in the next town over, me in floaties and Seth swimming around me showing off his flips and tricks. Some of the memories I probably made up; the images of me as a baby grasping onto Seth's fingers and one of me getting picked up from school by Seth and racing him to the ice-cream shop.
I turned my attention back to Jackson as he was concluding his speech.
"So we all sit together in this very room, spilling tears over a boy who died too young. But if we do not spill these tears, we would no longer be human. Seth reminds us today that anything can happen; it only takes a second for a human life to end. He used to tell me this all the time, tell me that his sister worried too much about dying and enjoy her life in the now. Let us see Seth's death as a painful reminder that life will end and let us make every moment count."
I remembered something that Seth used to say: to not feel the pain of loss is to be lost. I never understood what he meant by those words but he said them whenever I was sad trying to cheer me up. Now I understood. The grief that me and Mum and Dad and Ky felt meant that we loved Seth deeply. If we don't feel that pain ever, it means we have never truly loved someone.
The room erupted into applause as Ky wiped a stray tear from his cheek. He made his way off the podium thing and came over to our front bench. I moved over closer to Mum so he could sit down next to me in the corner spot.
"How are you doing Mollie?" He whispered squeezing my hand. The suit guy had made his way back to the podium and was talking again.
I smiled, but there were tears in my eyes. "Okay, I guess."
"That last part of the speech, you know the corny part?"
I nodded my head.
"Two days ago, I was really angry and I wanted to see Seth so I hacked into his email account."
I raised an eyebrow and he laughed.
"It's like he was begging me to hack in, his password was '1234' and it has been since he was six. So anyway, I hacked in and I found all these files he had backed up in his drafts. A bunch of them were just called 'story' and 'typing' which were novel ideas, but one was called 'Mollie'. I clicked on it and I saw what it wasn't; a eulogy for you."
"Can I read it?" I whispered.
"You've already heard it. That last part was what Seth wrote for you. I just changed your names around."
So that's why it didn't sound like something Ky would write. Seth wrote it. And that speech that he meant for the whole town of Tamwood to hear was spoken.
I smiled a tiny bit. "Do you think Seth would have liked his funeral?"
Ky winked. "Possibly."
It felt as if Seth were here right now talking to me.