The Eleventh Hour

PROLOGUE: THE FUNERAL

FLOWERS WERE EVERYWHERE. THAT I remember. There were vases of violets and irises. Huge arrangements of sunflowers and white roses, so large they dwarved the piano they sat upon. In the back, various other vases lined the walls with their corresponding notes and their written condolences. There were lots of different flowers. There were daisies and chrysanthemums and lilies and so many other flowers I couldn't possibly name. An old woman sat at the piano, droning out a somber tune, and the minister stood behind his podium, next to the table which bore a large, framed picture. Everyone was stone-faced in the audience, no tears were shed. No tissue boxes were passed along the rows. Everyone sat emotionlessly as if listening to a business presentation instead of the funeral of a seventeen year old girl. In the front row sat my stepmother, her face stoic as always.

I remember staring at her face and wondering how she really felt, knowing that she was responsible for this funeral, this death. My gaze found the picture on the table again. I remember when that picture was taken. It was the summer before when I went to visit my dad's family in Colorado. It's a picture of me with the city below me, a smile on my face and the wind in my clothes. I looked free, which is rather ironic. I'd never been free.

I remember how I stared at that picture for nearly the whole service, wondering what would've been, what could've been if all along that girl depicted in the picture really was me. If my eleventh hour had been different, if at the stroke of midnight, I woke up a new person instead of a dead one.

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Credits for the cover photo to Handbird Productions

http://www.handbird.com/eleventhhourpg.html

Credits for the cover photo to Kremp Florist

https://www.kremp.com/cherished-moments-casket-spray