Empathy // Lysa Hernandez

Grief

I walked out of the church and headed toward my car in the pouring rain. My black umbrella was stopping the precipitation from falling on to my (also black) outfit.

We had planned the event to be held on a rainy day, as we felt a sunny one would have been quite inappropriate.

I opened the door to my car and my mum got in the passenger's seat.

"You know, I don't usually cry at funerals; today marks the first time I ever have." I watched her eyes well up with tears as she set the GPS location to the cemetery.

I started the car and drove out of the church's parking lot and onto the road, following the instructions of the robotic voice. "You know, mum it's completely normal to bawl your eyes out at funerals. Especially if it's your younger sister's death we're mourning."

She nodded and wiped her tears with her black handkerchief. "You know, Marnie, you're absolutely right."

"When have I not been?" I asked. It was more of a statement than a question, but either way, it was an attempt to comfort her.

We drove in a deafening silence for around ten minutes, with only the sounds of the GPS guiding me to the cemetery, when my mum shattered the stillness like thin glass with a rather loud sigh.

"What is it?" I practically mumbled. I was focusing on a turn I was making. I was always bad at turning in the rain, for some reason.

"Oh nothing, it's just you never know what you have until it's gone, ya know?" Her hushed tone stopped her voice from breaking into a loud weep.

"Yeah, I get what you mean," I replied in the same glum voice she was using, as it seemed to console her.

There it was again, the agonizing quietude where we both seemed to lose track of the world around us. We were completely absentminded up until we got to the cemetery where she was to be buried. The same reticence that we kept in the car followed us as we passed acres of tombs. As we did, I wondered how many other people suffered the same emotions that we are now, and how they coped with it. There've been so many people feeling the same exact thing at the exact same time. That "thing" is grief.

Oh, my good old friend, grief. It's a strangely complex feeling as it leaves its host numb, feeling nothing at all, but simultaneously making them feel everything in the book. The pain, the sorrow, the mountains of tissues... However, after the excessive crying, you're left there, on your couch; entirely drained of emotion.

We reached a large coffin-sized hole in the ground, surrounded by our friends and family. They all seemed to know what grief was and were becoming somewhat acquainted with it today. They have been since the funeral started.

The pastor spoke, though I wasn't listening. I was off on my own path; so far off onto the sea of imagination that I've lost sight of the shore of reality.

After a few minutes of drowned-out speaking and muffled sobs, they began to lower the polished wood coffin into the six-foot deep, rectangular crater in the earth beneath us. I glanced over to my mother. She was devastated. She'd inhale sharply, and her exhales were jagged. You could see she was just as dead as Cheryl was.