Funeral

What form should grief take?

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It was a mass of sickly looking plastic flowers
and somber voices dressed in black
and when they wheeled her in
- a figure I could not recognize;
there were moans and wails
and it was all very surprising.

There was a loss
- that I knew,
I had experienced a deep loss
- I well understood
but
the tears would not come.

My insides were quite fine;
nothing at all like the anxious feelings I got before an exam.
If anything - maybe they were a bit empty.
Then I saw him break down.
A full grown man bawling like a freshly spanked child.
Still- the tears would not come.

Make no mistake -
I was not the "tough" type who refuses to cry
- I've cried for cartoons without any shame whatsoever
but the tears that easily welled for the slightest thing
- would refuse to show on the stage of life's greatest tragedy.


Of course she had meant a lot to me -
had there ever been anyone who meant more?
And though it all felt too real to be a delusion,
there was only that dry emptiness
surrounded by a sea of tears.