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It costed $11,000 to bury mother. Or was it $11,350? I'm not too sure. Death is becoming more expensive and if it was up to me, I would've buried the cadaver in our backyard. Charles did not appreciate the suggestion and threw his glass of water at me. He said it was rude. Rude to who? It wasn't like mother's cadaver will be offended.
People made too much fuss about the dead. The body inside the casket is just that- a cadaver. It's a place holder for the person mother was three days ago. Or four days ago, again, I'm not too sure. But mother, my mother, merely stopped existing. Humans do that- suddenly stop existing all together.
In front of the casket, the priest continued to read from the bible, something from Revelation.
Did the priest come from the bundle that the funeral home offered? I should've just asked Charles to read and save a couple of dollars. Working the cashier doesn't really pay well.
Standing behind the crowd allowed me to observe their expressions. Tears fell from Annie's eyes as Charles rubbed her arm, Aunt Lorienne sobbed, almost overpowering the priest's gospel, to her right stood the funeral director. I briefly wondered whether it's morally acceptable to profit from someone's grief, loss, and pain. But then again, morality is subjective, so perhaps it is. After all, everyone is merely doing what they can to survive.
Some commotion in front took my attention. Two men started to lower the casket. Flowers were thrown. Aunt Lorienne sobbed even more which reminded me of the angry cow at a dairy farm I happened upon one time.
"That's gonna be me soon." A woman's voice to my right reached me, along with some slight sniffling no where near Aunt Lorienne's uncontrollable howling.
"Me too," I agreed. The woman beside me snapped her head towards me and stared for quite a while until I decided to meet her eyes. She was closer than I anticipated and so I took a step away. Dark blonde hair- could've been mistaken for a light brown- framed her face, wide green eyes stared at me. I did not know what she was thinking or why she was making a certain expression but I didn't particularly felt the need to understand.
The woman's eyebrows furrowed. She quickly wiped her wet cheeks. "You're sick too?"
"We all are born sick, aren't we? Which is why we were baptized."
If there exist no proof of such original sickness, how should I know if I really do have one? Were there symptoms that could be identified and associated to such sickness?
"Well--yeah in Christianity but...that wasn't-- I meant if you were physically sick? Sick enough that you will be ...you know?" She nodded slightly towards the men covering up the hole.
"No, I don't think I do." I haven't gone to see a doctor in several years. "Not that I know of."
"Sabine!" Charles called me over to the shade of a tree and I went over. His arms were crossed, eyebrows furrowed but it did not have the gentleness of when the woman did it earlier. "What was that?"
