Funeral

“Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them” – George Eliot

Lenny woke up in frantic sweats and muffled screams. But, she was certain that by noon, she would have willed herself to forget the nightmare ever happened in the first place. It had been months since her last nightmare, maybe even a year. But, it made sense that on this day of all the days she had seen her father’s lifeless body in her dream again.

Today, she was going to a funeral.

Earlier in the week, she tried everything she could to get out of this funeral situation. She tried lying - that she was having a family emergency and would have to be out of the city. She tried saying the truth - that funerals were triggering for her and she’d rather not be involved in the planning committee of one. None of that worked. Even though she was a nameless, faceless entry-level staff in the events department of the company, for some mysterious reason the COO had insisted that her name be included as one of the event planners handling the occasion.

Now, the funeral invitation sat idly on her desk as a reminder to her to be at the location by 10 AM. She glanced at her phone to see she had only 45 minutes left to get going. She was already dressed up; wrapped in a simple black, knee-length dress, and her blonde hair covered in the most conservative black hat she could find. Her hair seemed too bright for a day as gloomy as this. Just the same way her eyes looked too alive, too green, too sultry. With her hair covered in a hat and her eyes hidden behind a pair of tinted sunglasses, she assured herself that she was ready. ‘Where the hell is Lynn?’ She thought to herself and just then she heard the sound of tires running across granite. Finally.

“Mum!”, Hannah’s high-pitched voice tore through the silence; reminding Lenny why 5-year-olds were the absolute worst. Lenny sighed and braced herself as she stepped out of her bedroom to meet Hannah in the kitchen where she was enjoying a bowl of cereal. The distance between the room and the kitchen was merely a few steps just as the distance between anywhere and anywhere in their tiny one-bedroom bungalow.

“What is it, sweetie?”, she asked Hannah who seemed to have forgotten she just shrieked the whole house down. Hannah's enormous brown eyes remained focused on her cereal as she ate one fruit loop at a time. Her dirty blonde hair fell over her face giving the illusion of a halo. In times like this, she appeared so adorable and innocent, surely not the same child that had filled all the shoes in the house with milk only a day ago.

Lenny was lost musing over her devious yet lovable daughter when the knock on the door reminded her that Lynn had arrived. As she went to open the door, she could see that Hannah's bowl was still half full.

“Three fruit loops at a time won't kill you, baby. Aunt Lynn is here already”, said Lenny in an attempt to get Hannah to eat faster. 

“Wow. Look. at. you”, is the first thing Lynn said as she walked in; taken by surprise by her sister's outfit. Of the two sisters, Lynn was known to be the conservative one. The 'good' one. Lenny on the other hand always had a reputation for being a bit of a wild child and she cemented that reputation when she got pregnant and dropped out of college.

“Too much?”Lenny asked while doing a little spin making both Lynn and Hannah giggle. Even while trying to be modest in appearance, everything about Lenny's essence screamed at you in the face. She was too much. Once the brief giggling session was over, they maintained a gaze and shared a knowing look between themselves before Lynn broke the silence;

“Did you know her very well?”, she asked in reference to the deceased. The dead woman who was going to be put into the ground today. Even though Lenny hadn’t outrightly told her about the nightmares, Lynn had a suspicion that she was still struggling. It had been over a decade now since the tragic incident but, no one was hit harder than Lenny.

“Barely. It doesn’t make any sense why they’d want me there”, Lenny headed back to the kitchen to start packing Hannah’s lunch and do a final check of the things Hannah would need while spending her day at her Aunt’s.

“Rich people are so freaking weird”, murmured Lynn as she picked up the invitation sitting on the kitchen counter. The invitation was designed so flamboyantly that one would think it was an invitation to the Met Gala. Well; Sienna Behrt-Lehman was a flamboyant woman and she wouldn’t have wanted less.

“Time to go, Hannah. C’mon, I’m already late”. They gathered all they'd need for the day and proceeded to leave the house and head to Lynn’s car. The building sat in isolation; surrounded mostly by trees with the next nearest house being miles away. Being in the middle of nowhere helped the rent go down a little bit. But sometimes it almost felt like there was something in the air here. Something haunted. 

Right before Hannah got in the back seat of Lynn's car, Lenny shared a hug with her and kissed her on her forehead;

“See you tonight, baby”, she said and Hannah repeated the gesture. Mother and child, yet they looked nothing alike. Hannah was all her father; from the brown eyes to the dirty-blonde hair and pouty lips. From the driver's seat, Lynn watched them perform the heartwarming act she had seen a dozen times. The bond between Lenny and Hannah was so strong right from the day she was born. Even though frankly Lenny couldn't afford to keep a child, she had insisted on having Hannah in her custody and had devoted the last five years of her life to her daughter. Lynn would never have thought that Lenny could be such a great mother. But maybe having kids really did change people.

Lynn started the car; ready to go and they exchanged their goodbyes. Lenny watched as they drove off and eventually disappeared before she went to her car. As usual, it took her 5 to 10 minutes to get the old thing to start and as she drove to the funeral venue, the vehicle left a long trail of black smoke behind her. She had almost gotten to her destination when the rain started.