A Girl, A kind Man and A Little Bit Of Hope

Chapter 2: The Funeral

Chapter 2: The Funeral

Groggily Jenny opened her eyes, she could see the sun glaring through the window, it shone so violently she had to immediately shut her eyes, squinting to see.  Beside the bed sat on a chair looking like the living dead was her unreliable but faithful mother, she had been crying and her bloodshot puffy eyes gleamed as Jenny slowly awoke.

“Morning.” She said with a croak in her throat like every word she said would turn into a sob.

“Morning.” Jenny replied quietly.  She knew the hospital well and had stared at the ceiling examining the polystyrene tiled pattern and material.  Jenny could describe every last detail of it easily.

Doctor Harrison came in and asked for Jenny’s mother, Jenny was used to this as it had happened many times before and Jenny had been left waiting in the stuffy hospital room, breathing in sterile air.  Inside the children’s wards there were a lot of pointless uplifting paintings hanging cheaply from the battered walls where the pain had been scraped off and was peeling.  The surfaces were dustless and not one speck of uncleanliness could be pointed out or spotted by either the patients or the critics.

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Later at the house Rebecca sighed a long sigh and placed the card the strange man had given her yesterday on the side in her newly cleaned house.  After leaving rather rudely she had sped home to give the house a skip and make it a more homely place again.  Over her rage and anger she had almost forgotten about Jenny.  Grief has strange ways of effecting some people and sometimes shutting others out who matter to you most is the easiest way to get through the sorrow.  Everyone knows everybody dies but nobody can accept it because death is still taken as a tragedy that should never have happened in the first place.  There are fairy tales about a dark shadowy creature who stalks you all your life and then when he thinks it is your time to die he kills you.  It is said he has eyes like the fires of hell and he is always there in your blind spot lurking in the shadows ready to come out of the ashes.  A poisoned mind ready to devour life and consume all living health and we will be forgotten and more simply left to be spirits drifting through time on a piece of rock so alive drifting through space.

Maybe it was the way she looked at Jenny that she could picture this ghostly figure lurking behind her so close now that he could breathe his deadly breath on her neck and reach out and grasp her life and that’s it she would be gone forever.  Her organs would give up and she would cease to exist; no more pulsing veins, no more hopeful face looking up to Rebecca for answers that the widow could not give.  She could not even tell her daughter it was going to be alright because she simply did not know what was going to happen to both of them.  Could she bear to lose both her husband and her daughter?  She knew that no one was immortal but how could any creature take the life of a child so pure and innocent when they had barely lived at all?  One day Rebecca would have to look into the pale skin and sallow eyes.  Could she even look when Jenny was reduced to a skinny figure with barely the strength to speak or whisper to anyone, could anyone let their daughter rot away in a hospital?

The service started at 1pm so maybe it was time they both started getting ready, ready for her husband’s body to be buried deep in the ground for ever.  Even though the house was now more of a home it was still silent as if anyone was scared to speak in fear it would awaken ghosts.  Rebecca knew that her future was going to be one of sadness and depression and she wondered how close death was to her and how long it would be till she felt his icy breath on her neck like she was being watched.  Everyone was always being watched, always by him.  How could you be the one to judge when to take someone’s life and she could see that in some ways people should pity the ghastly heartless creature that has to make that decision. 

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Jenny yawned, she was still tired after her dramatic visit to the hospital and hours of pointless boing sleep.  She despised her disease but the kind man had given her hope for her future.  He had fought the disease and now he ran in the mornings like a normal healthy person.  Maybe that is why he had run to her when she collapsed in the park, maybe he recognized his own trauma in the form of Jenny.  It was hard to tell what such a scared face was thinking apart from kindness and pity.  He was so kind, why should he waste his time on a sick child who he hardly knew?  That could be the cure, happiness and determination so maybe if the little girl just kept fighting forwards she could yet again be normal and blessed as a human being. 

“Mum, what did the kind man want?” Jenny asked calmly, she was sat down in the lounge scanning through a picture book.

“Money.” Rebecca replied bluntly.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I mean he wanted you to be one of his clients.”

“Was he a doctor?”

“No, a social person thingy.”

“He was kind.”

“No, he wanted money Jenny darling, there’s a difference.”

Jenny shrugged she knew that the man had meant well and maybe he thought that she had needed someone there to help her get better and if she was going to get a new doctor who did social stuff then she knew who she would pick.

Jenny climbed up the stairs lightly hopping up to her room.  She had read the clock downstairs and remembered that her day could get so much, much worse than it already had been.  It seemed highly unlikely but most people said in quotes that they would rather be dead than have someone they love dead and still be alive.  That’s the easy way out though, that way you don’t feel sorrow or pity or the emotional agony and bruising inside where the pain was so much you felt like your heart was literally going to break.

The black dress looked so morbid and unsettling on her that she was tempted to take it off, she knew she couldn’t though.  At a funeral black was the colour of grief and respect and it suited the occasion well for maybe death himself had made us wear it until it was a tradition worldwide. 

When the news from her mother had originally come she had felt so stupid and small, ridiculously numb and unfeeling.  No words had come but the tears faithfully rolled down her cheeks and face like a never ending waterfall of salty solution.  She had not blocked anyone out but she had been silent for several days allowing the information to fully soak in until she could truthfully say her father was dead without multiple excuses and reason flooding into her head, she just had to accept the fact that her father was dead and even though it was expected that she would surely die before them both, the impossible man had proven all the doctors wrong.  She was not scared of death, Jenny was more scared of wounding her mother even more, at this moment in time but she was sure that in her future her life would matter to her and she would most certainly and rightfully want to live it and grow old.  Have a family she could rely on like the man in the hospital was going to have but she knew that she should not get her hopes up on living because what was the point when everyone could see her declining into a shell and then one day she would simply not be there, when Jenny had fully faded and all that was left was a body, an empty body.