Our Bruised Bodies | Bradley Bradshaw

ACT FIVE - PART SIXTEEN

FIVE YEARS LATER

Visually, a funeral does not differ so much from the next or the prior one. For them, it's always a large open field of grass, a military cemetery with white crosses ramped into the ground to mark a lost life. People always wear black or uniform. Mostly it was so hot, they all couldn't wait to leave again. The same phrases are used, sadness is expressed, kindness is promised. Hands are shaken while condolence is wished. The flag is folded before it gets handed to their loved ones and their wings are punched into the casket.

It was a good running system. Everyone knew their place, knew what they were meant to say and to do. They've lost so many people over the time, Grace was sure she could hold a funeral and wouldn't make a single mistake.

It has meaning, all of it, of course. From the placement of the flag over the casket, to how it's later folded. The music that is played and the honour guard of sailors or aviators, dressed in immaculate dress blues, standing at attention embodying the Navy's commitment to honour and respect.

But it has lost its meaningfulness to Grace a long time ago. Now it was just a mandatory appointment that couldn't be missed. She knew she wasn't the only one that felt that way, especially with the kind of conversation that followed. The brass was always working. Even moments after burying a member of them. They had to find a new member, a seat at the table has just become available after all.

A ceremony like that is meant to show respect and deep gratitude for the service the fallen has done for their country.

It was for the family, but it was also overly emotionally training for them.

It was for the brass, but they also couldn't care less.

Captain Stafford had asked the younger Kazansky once halfway through a funeral, who it was they were burying, before snorting and telling her that he hadn't thought he wouldn't outlive that bastard as she answered him, before pulling a cigar out of the inner pocket of his uniform jacket and lightening it. Then he told Grace that he would be over there and to find him afterwards, for he had business to talk with her. Grace had given a nod and had let the captain go.

The younger Kazansky came to the conclusion that no one wanted to be here. That for the brass all a funeral was, was a waste of time, and the families didn't want to be so much in the spotlight. Having to uphold appearance despite just having lost their husband, father, son, brother. It was too rare for the brass to show up at a female's funeral, there were just too little woman, who were members of the brass.

Grace Kazansky had been to many funerals over the years. Many more than weddings, which was worrisome but not strange in her field of work. But other than most people going to a funeral, her eyes were rarely set on the casket or her mind open to hear the words people spoke in the honour of the fallen. She had been at too many funerals to still pay attention.

All she did was watch the wife of the fallen, sometimes the mother. Most of them took it with dignity, displaying their strength, enduring that they were made to stand in front of their beloved casket for people, who they didn't even know to stare at them, some failed to mask their deep sadness, tears falling silently, while they didn't dare to move, to reach up and wipe the tears away.

Grace felt like her place was more with the dead than with the living.

She knew the day had to come, she had to stand before a casket, dressed in black, an umbrella over her head to keep the sun away. For no sunrays should fall down on her that day. Watching as someone punched her father's wings into his casket, Maverick, it had to be him doing it, before they would hand her his folded flag. But that didn't mean she was ready. Nor that she would ever be ready to let go of her father.