Thursday, November 19, 2009

4:00Pm, August 22nd, 2005

I remember the rain.

It feels cold and dominant on my bare skin. The air itself isn't cold but my arms are folded tightly against my chest anyway...
The sun is hiding - the sky is grey. It had been a hot and sunny summer. But not today.

There are cars and lots of people everywhere, everyone is moving. I feel like I'm floating. Floating and drowning - my dress is soaked and sticking to me. The dark blue fabric that was once coarse to the touch was now clinging to me for dear life, feeling more and more like a wetsuit.

Scratch the floating; I'm on a conveyor belt.

I reluctantly step through the crowd to stand in the inner circle. Black suits and soaked swede.
Then the rain stops all of a sudden. My eyes keep bleeding stainlessly down my face. My cousin hands me a rose while she holds an umbrella over our heads. All the grandchildren get a rose.

I remember the pastor joking about not needing holy water

Everyone laughs briefly. Then it is quiet again. At least it seems like it. Logic and rationality tell me I am hearing people sobbing but I feel like my head is in a fishbowl - everything is muffled and far away. The smoothness of the stem of the rose is contrasted only by the sharpneess of the thorns.

I can't remember if I bled or not. I can't remember saying anything. I can't remember thinking. But I do remember stepping through the wet squishy grass in open toed sandals to place that rose with the others. Over top the cross on the polished oak casket my grandmother is now decomposing in.