Queer as Muke

1.19.4 Good Grief!

It's a wet and windy Spring day when Michael and his friends gather to farewell his father in the cemetery that's perched high on the sea cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Sydney's Bronte suburb.

Black umbrellas provide cover against the rain for the onlookers standing either side of his father's coffin as the priest 's quavery voice prays for Daryl Clifford's soul, "We are dust and we will return to dust..."

Calum stands between Corey and Sam, all three occasionally glancing at Michael's cousin, Caitlin who's standing opposite them, and who has been weeping and wailing the entire service and is now, towards the end, increasing her volume exponentially with every sentence the priest utters.

Even Karen, Michael's black clad mother and now Daryl's widow, grimaces visibly every time Caitlin lets out a howl, and the pinched look she has about her mouth only tells everyone else how difficult she's finding it not to round on her niece and call her out on her noisy grieving.

"We pray for those who have died, Lord Jesus, and are buried in the hope of rising again..."

Michael's locked jaw pulses as he listens to the Catholic Priest droning on and on. In the end he can't take it any more and extricates both himself and his umbrella from the group to a walk a little way off, away from the mourning, away from the sea of black and away from the constant reminders of sin, sinning and the sinned from the Catholic Church that his mother so loves.

He looks out to the swirl of the Pacific Ocean, today reflecting the skies cloudy grey colour, and lets himself breathe. That is until Calum comes walking up to him, himself crying and Michael looks at him in disbelief. Without a word he hands Calum his umbrella to hold and gets a large, pristine white handkerchief out of his pocket. As Calum looks on, presuming that Michael is going to give the hankie to him to wipe his eyes, Michael unrolls it carefully. Nestled inside is a tightly rolled joint which Michael puts to his lips, lighting it and taking a deep drag as he watches the waves crash in on the rocks below.

Calum's tears for Michael flow as he tries to hold them back and he shakes his head sadly when Michael offers him the joint. He doesn't know whether to be impressed or incredibly sad that this is how Michael's behaving at his own father's funeral. He knows what Michael's father was like, probably best out of all the friends as none of them were around for their teenage years, but even he knows that he doesn't know all of it; not the years that happened before he and Michael met at school, and he only really knows what Michael's told him and what he saw on the odd occasions that he went round to their house. What happened daily and behind closed doors he knows he's only had a glimpse of...

~~~

Caitlin's children run around the house during the wake like wild things and she doesn't care to correct them, letting them scream and shout and trip the elderly relatives up. She herself walks about with plates of sandwiches in a zombie like state, a permanently damp tissue held to her leaky and, by now, very puffy eyes.

"Would you pull yourself together please?" Karen asks quietly , taking her by the arm on one of her many sandwich runs around the room.

"Uncle Daryl died Aunt Karen! I'm allowed to fall apart!"

Karen sighs, "Fine! Then fall apart!"

She shakes her head watching Caitlin walk away; Daryl didn't even like her that much, although he wasn't violent to her like he was to Michael, and she supposes in the last few years uncle and niece had had an okay relationship. Nothing to write home about though, so she's at a bit of a lost as to why she's carrying on like a pork chop.

"Can we leave?" Corey asks in a stage whisper, looking around at Michael's friends all huddled together in chairs in the corner of the room.

"Shhh!" Sam tells him out of the corner of his mouth, seeing Caitlin coming around yet again.