Trust No Bitch: Part 3

Lilly Philipps: Wednesday, 14th January, 2016

It had been Lilly's choice to have the funeral for her baby at the same cemetery they had buried her mother over 10 years before. The plot next to her gravestone wasn't available, but Lilly had chosen the one as close as possible, around 5 stones away. Only Luca had been invited, none of her friends, not her dad nor Jasmine. Just the two of them. She knew that wasn't the way most people liked to do it; she'd been to the funeral of her dad's closest friend's child a few years before and it was for the most part, no different from any other. People had turned up in all black, there were speeches made, a vicar to oversee it all. Sienna's funeral, however, Lilly had eventually decided would not be the same. That wasn't to say that she had known that straight away; the process of planning how the service would go was to be plagued throughout by her indecisiveness. None of Lucas' quips about her not inheriting her dad's mental acuity or how tragic she would be at running a business helped either; the only benefit of his assistance was that he was as obliging as ever in that he went along with whatever it was that Lilly said. First, they were to wear black but then, that was scrapped, after Lilly remembered how hard that had been at Cleo's funeral; she'd spent more time fretting over what to wear than actually writing a speech, one that nobody had really seemed to be listening to in the end, presumably due to its banality. She had, after all, basically plagiarised it off the internet, and whilst that student-trying-to-get-their-essay-finished-before-the-deadline strain of behaviour was semi-excusable when it was for the most loathsome woman Lilly had ever known, it wasn't for her baby daughter. It was her ruling, therefore, that Luca could wear whatever he wanted and so could she, giving her more time to work on the speech. But then, came the next obstacle, the speech itself. Lilly hadn't really thought about it much, and once she did, she quickly realised that there were no emotions she could express about Sienna aloud without them coming out just as prosaic and clichéd as those of the eulogies she had copied from the internet, leading to that being scrapped too. Next was the rejection of all guests. They'll just judge you, for not having a speech and for not making an effort, Lilly told herself, and you don't want that. The only thing they kept, despite Lilly's agnosticism (whilst all her life experience would suggest to her that there was no God, actually having to come to a conclusion about where she stood on the matter required far too much cerebration for her liking), and Luca's proclaimed atheism, was the vicar. At Lilly's behest, he had shunned any biblical quotes and instead read a Ben Jonson poem, at which even he became misty eyed. "It is not growing like a tree..." He had said in a low, gravelly Scottish accent. "In bulk, doth make man better be. Or standing long as oak, three hundred year, to fall at last, dry, bald, and sere. A lily of a day, is fairer far in May. Although it fall and die that night, it was the plant and flower of Light. In small proportions we just beauties see and in short measures life may perfect be." Lilly was unsure what the majority of it meant, but had cried herself none the less, the inside of her feeling as if it were hollowed out like an easter egg, Luca again trying what Lilly presumed to be his best to comfort her. It was quite futile; not even the hand of a supposedly benevolent God himself could do so, Lilly was sure of it. And so she continued to weep into Luca's shoulder, even harder at the sight of the wicker basket coffin being lowered into the ground, Magnolias like the ones from Cleo's funeral rested on top. Despondently rubbing his hand on her back, Luca had been the one to release the pink, gleaming balloons he had brought a month before and let them drift away into the pale, blue sky. There, with the words "It's a Girl!" emblazoned across them, they seemed to hover overhead for a second, giant, fuchsia coloured bumblebees, before they were dragged away, like feathers, by the evening breeze. Lilly felt as if she didn't have her body to weigh her down, she could have easily been swept along with them.