Pretty Boy [bxb] | ✔️

• Epilogue

Epilogue

Six months later...
February.

It may be bad, but I never feel sad at funerals. Just empty, really. Mostly because I've only ever been to the funerals of people I don't know and only went to because my parents knew them. Now, this time is different. I know this person, and for once, stood in the church wearing that one formal black suit that I had hanging at the back of my wardrobe waiting for an opportunity to be worn, I don't feel empty. I feel sad. More than that. Dolorous.

I am sad enough to cry because, as I watch the casket get carried down the aisle, I think about how the person who lay in there knew that this was going to happen. They did this to themselves. They are the reason they have passed on and that everyone in this room is stood, watching their lifeless body get carried down a synagogue aisle in a wooden box. They took their own life, they anticipated a funeral and a burial and hymns, and they did not want to be here on this Earth any longer.

They wanted this. They did this. And for that, it's sad enough to cry, because while they did this, they did not deserve it. It being the loneliness that they felt leading them to do this. The depression they felt that caused the loneliness. The bad things that happened in their life that cause the depression. The person who caused the bad things.

Alex can't keep his tears in as he and three other men carry his mother's casket on their shoulder.

When it's time, he stands at the front of the church, to the side of where his mother lay and reads out his speech that I silently watched him write a few days ago.

"On behalf of my family, I would like to start by thanking everyone that is here today and have sent their condolences. They have been of great comfort in this time and reminds us of the impact my mother had on so many people," He begins.

Alex's eyes catch mine. I nod. He sucks in a breath and continues.

"My name is Alexander, I am Victoria's son and only child. She never told many people about her life, that includes me, but I can tell you that she was born to Esther and Alexander Lewenburg on the twelfth of April, nineteen seventy-four in Plymouth, here in Massachusetts, and that's about it for what I know about her childhood. At the hands of my father, my mother and I did not have an easy life, and I'd always try to escape that and spend as much time away from my house as I could, so there were not many things that I actually noticed about my mother, meaning I am unable to stand here and tell you about all of her interests and hobbies, but I feel the need to read this speech as a way of apologising."

His eyes are on me again. He sucks in another breath. Continues.

"That's not to say that there is nothing that I can say about her. I know that she loved to dance. I'd walk in on her dancing to the music on the radio in the kitchen and she'd try to encourage me to dance too. Sometimes I did. Other times I was too stubborn. I groaned in embarrassment and I denied the offer. She would frown, in a way that you could see the sting of my words on her, but she carried on nonetheless, dancing away and laughing. Beautifully. I regret ever saying no, ever brushing her off, because I will never get to dance with her again, and I should have soaked the experience up as much as I could. Regardless of me denying, her positive energy was what I needed on a bad day. She also had a passion for singing, which is where I got it from. When I was a child, she always sang to me as I lay in bed. Her soft, beautiful voice always lulled me to sleep and I am so grateful that I have a recording of it. I still listen to it today as I fall sleep in the arms of my significant other because it makes me feel so safe and it reminds me of the good days where she would kiss my forehead and tell me that everything was alright. I was naïve enough to believe her because why wouldn't I? My mother never lies. I thought she was so kind. I say it like that because after I came out, everything changed. My dad got even worse, I got kicked out, and she got left on her own. She cut contact with me, and when I saw her after that, I told her that I did not think of her as my mother anymore and that I never wanted to see her again. And I never did. I blame myself. If I were to have told her, 'I don't appreciate how you handled this, but I still love you, of course I do,' then maybe things would have been different and we wouldn't all be here now staring ahead at her casket. Her last words to me were 'I love you, Alex' and I told her 'no, you don't' and left, never to hear her voice or see her face or watch her dance ever again. I wish I didn't. I wish I said 'I love you too'. I wish I was able to say goodbye. The last thing she heard from me was so negative, and the last thing I heard from her was so positive, something I am so grateful for being her last words to me, and I really think that shows who she was as a person. She did not handle things great, and she did cut ties with me first, she did not accept the fact that I have an attraction to men because she was so faithful to her God, but she still let me know that she loved me. She still loved me even though there are parts of me that she had no desire to learn how to love, and I can see the desperation of her wanting me to say it back now. And I know that it's too late now, but I love you, mom, and I'm sorry for not telling you that. I have only ever loved three people in my life. My mother has always been one of them."