There's a song we listen to a lot in the days after. "Blindsided" by Bon Iver.
I played it for Beth, and she started listening to it on repeat.
Blinded... I was... blindsided.
We'd lie in her bed, sharing earbuds, and listen to the whole album two or three times in a row.
We listen to it as we ride to her mom's funeral.
Beth reads a Bible passage. "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." I'm not sure if she chose it. People cry throughout. She hasn't talked about faith much lately, but I assume times like these were when it actually became useful.
I don't know anyone at the funeral, and I keep getting introduced to different people. I shake their hand and smile and then immediately regret my smile because we're at a funeral: why are you smiling, you moron?
It's an open casket, which scares the hell out of me. I've never been in the presence of a dead body before, and I can't figure out how seeing the corpse of your loved one is supposed to make anyone feel better. It only serves as a stark reminder that death is always just around the corner. One minute you're talking to someone, the next they're gone—nothing more to say or do, left only with whatever they'd accomplished up until the point when their heart stopped. How did we manage to enjoy anything?
What would people say about me if I died tomorrow? He was nice sometimes; a mediocre (at best) student; had vague ambitions but didn't really do anything substantial; dated Beth, she seemed to like him. That was something, I guess. Some people went through life completely alone. I had to remember that fortune: that I wasn't born like the elephant man. That most people weren't afraid of me.
Mom might be afraid of me sometimes, so that was less than ideal; at least I still had her though. The story of my relationship with her hadn't just abruptly ended like it had with Beth and her mom. They hadn't been getting along before things got bad: Amanda said Beth was being disrespectful; Beth said Amanda was suffocating her. Maybe they'd worked it out. I don't know. Beth and I had never really talked about it after she got sick. Or maybe the illness just completely overshadowed it. As far as I knew, none of their conflict was ever fully resolved, meaning it would stay unresolved for the rest of Beth's life.
I guess you never knew when someone was going to be ripped away from you. Maybe it didn't make sense to leave things unresolved.
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Alternative
Teen FictionTim's public high school experience thus far has been characterized by bad grades and the total absence of a social life; he's listless and needs a change. So, after grade eleven ends, his mom decides to enrol him in a bizarre, little alternative sc...
