The Edifice

1. A Nice Day For A Funeral

I never know what to wear to funerals.

I've attended enough that you'd think I would by now, but no, for every one of those morbid mornings just like this I've stared dejectedly at my closet before reluctantly picking out the same black dress. The scalloped neckline seems too frivolous to convey severity, the pleats fall far too short for grieving. The cinched waistline could be forgiven at my parent's wake, when I was trapped too deep mourning for fashion, but this morning I look like a gold-digger on pay day.

The reflection that greets me in my closet mirror isn't even recognisable. A pair of honey brown eyes consider my body reproachfully from a freckled face even gaunter than usual. The poor decision of braiding my hair back so  tightly has left my exposed skin glowing almost as pale as the moon in the early morning light. Far too much exposed skin.

I grab a moth-eaten black coat from the rack to cover my arms, the black almost faded to grey with age, and bury what little bust I have beneath an equally tattered scarf. Besides my work uniform, most of my clothes are fossils from the years before my inheritance had been sunk into a degree and rent. Even then, the pale blue scrubs of my aged care clinic are soiled with thorough use and fluids not worth recounting.

My phone chimes with a final, desperate alarm for the morning, and I quickly finish pairing my measly outfit with worn nurse's clogs before hurrying outside to my car. There's barely a drop in temperature as I jog out from my tiny apartment complex across the frost-slicked street. Thankfully my car heats up quickly and I try to force myself to relax as I make my way across town, eyes burning now from something other than cold.

Hersely Aged Care offered compassionate leave to all staff when patients passed, two days of time that I'd never imagined myself taking. But for Terrance Noble, I wouldn't miss a final goodbye for the world.

Miserable as the thought is, I had few close friends among my colleagues and far less besides them. The moment Bob had been surrendered to our home-visit care however, he'd become a staple part of my life. Few of my fellow staff had patience for his eccentric habits to which he had been thoroughly cemented, but whether it was through a mutual solitude in grief or simply an unlikely combination of personalities, we'd become fast friends since our first meeting. I was the only nurse whose presence he tolerated and in return I found myself devoting hours outside of work to spending time with him.

He'd lost his wife to cancer a decade past and had been cruelly emancipated from his own son not long after. Having had both my own parents torn from me in a car accident as a teenager, I think he saw me as a replacement for a son too selfish for the burden of an aging father. In return, I was more than happy to substitute his expanse of wisdom and humor for the company I'd lost.

My lungs are quivering with the effort of restraining sobs by the time I'm pulling in at the Hersely Cemetery. I force myself to push aside the memories of the hours I'd spent with Bob tending to his sprawling maze of a garden. He was heavily obsessed with the type of New-Age spiritualism slowly awakening in the mid-west, and as a result my car still reeks of the sage and lavender he'd thrust upon me at the end of each visit. I gulp in deep breaths of the calming scent until the weight in my chest lessens.

It's been a week since I'd arrived to his cold townhouse on Mulroy's Street, the blinds still closed and his windchimes hanging leaden in the air as though foreboding the sight I was to find inside. A week since I'd entered his icy bedroom and pulled back the sheets from the unmoving form still curled up as though asleep.

It was not the first time I'd stumbled across such a scene in my job, but the closeness of our friendship had left me aching with a clinging grief ever since. Now, the pressure of saying this final goodbye to him is the most horrifying part of it all.