Page 18 of Love at a Funeral and Other Awkward Conversations

All the times he fooled me into doing something he wanted always ended with a charming smile. It was all in good fun. But this time, he’s not smiling. There is no way out of this, no just kidding or playful high five. This is the end. And I’m scared.

Without my big brother, I’m afraid to face what comes next. Whether it’s the next ten hours or ten years, I can’t lean on him anymore. Without him, I’m by myself. I don’t have a brother anymore. I’m an only child. I don’t like this. I don’t want it.

I stand by his side alone for a while until Aunt Joanie steps next to me.

“Handsome, even now.”

When I nod at her words, she pushes my hair away from my eyes and kisses my cheek. She wraps her arm around me as we silently stare at Ray lying in front of us until she squeezes my arm. “Come on, let’s sit down.”

I let her guide me to the front row of chairs on the side, a few feet away from the casket. Mom is zoned out again, probably from another pill. Dad is antsy, walking in loops around the room, inspecting everything in it, passing the casket with a hovering hand, as if afraid to touch it.

Shayna and the girls come in, and she stands in front of my brother, crying. I wonder if, after everything that has happened between her and Ray, she still loves him. She certainly gives the impression of a widow in mourning, and I’m not sure how to comfort her or if I’m even supposed to. Normally, I’d whisper something to my brother about how she’s always late—as if I wasn’t—then he’d elbow me and roll his eyes. I imagine if Ray were alive, he’d tell me to hug her, so I do. He’d tell me to act like I mean it, so I do.

The girls, in matching purple dresses, hold hands. I hug them too, and they show me the cards they made for their daddy. Their scribbles kill me because I know how Ray held on to every single one of their stupid drawings. He’d crow about the beautiful bunnies and magnificent family scenes, but I don’t have it in me to do the same. I don’t know how to do it anyway. I take the cards to put them under my brother’s hands, his stiff fingers difficult to move over the colorful markings, then hold each girl up so she can see him. Lucy pats his cheek, and I try to choke down the lump lodged in my throat, but it’s impossible when Lara kisses his forehead. They’re so in love with their dad, oblivious to what any of this means.

Shayna thanks me, and we hug once more before she puts on sunglasses and sits at the end of the row, on the other side of my parents. The girls follow her, pulling out Moana and Ariel dolls from their bag.

And then it begins.

In a single-file line, people filter into the room. One after another, they all come. It seems like all of New Jersey is here. People I recognize, family and old friends, and people I don’t know, but who spend time introducing themselves to me, explaining how they know Ray and how much they love him.

Ray’s girlfriend shows up. I only met her once, but I know her name is Nell. She’s wearing a black blazer over a Bruce Springsteen shirt, with her brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, and her pale skin is blotchy and red.

For a minute, I fear this funeral will transform into a soap opera, but Shayna has her head down, and Nell scurries through the line. She places something in the casket before taking a seat in the back, far away from us.

RJ’s baseball team shows up, all the players in their uniforms, and my eyes are so blurry with tears, they’re one big blob of gray.

Dad shakes their hands. Mom can’t look at them. I hug and thank each one for coming.

His students and coworkers arrive. I’m told the school arranged buses to bring them over. I accept all of the cards and art projects scrawled with notes written to Mr. George.

By the time I look at the clock, almost three hours have passed, and the funeral hasn’t even started yet. We wait until every last person has come inside the room, and then Mr. Mancini tells us we will begin the service.

It’s standing room only.

A priest from my grandmother’s church is up first, reading and talking about some passage from the bible. Nana’s at the end of our row, burning through her second box of tissues, while Pop is stoic next to her. She demanded the service have some religious elements, and who was I to argue with a woman who, in her words, is “close to meeting God.” With the way she’s wailing, you’d think she was going to throw herself into traffic to follow Ray into the ground. She’s so loud, I’m sure Jesus himself would come down from the cross to tell her to cool it.

Aunt Joanie reads a poem, and then it’s my turn to speak.

I lick my lips and crumple a tissue in my hand so it’s practically unusable as I stand behind the podium. I clear my throat, look out over the packed room, then clear it again. I sniffle, and it resonates through the microphone. I apologize.

I’ve written and rewritten this eulogy so many times over the last week that my thoughts are mostly a jumbled stream of consciousness typed on paper, and I tell everyone so. They laugh, and I wipe the sweat dotting my upper lip.

Using my index finger as a guide so I don’t lose my place through my hazy vision, I start reading. First, I thank everyone for coming. I thank them for the cards, baskets, and flowers, but make a plea for no more casseroles. “We’re out of room in the freezer,” I say. “But if your heart tells you to send chocolate, we have plenty of room for that.”

The room rumbles with low chuckles again, and I take a breath before I go on. “To say this has all been a nightmare would be woefully inaccurate. This is much worse, but I haven’t yet found the word for the horror movie our lives have become. The death of my brother has left all of us, me, my parents, Shayna, and the twins, in what seems like permanent darkness. With Ray gone, he’s taken all of our sunlight with him.”

I pause to wipe the tissue under my eye, determined to get through this for my brother. This eulogy is the last gift I can give him, so I will finish it as best I can. “I’ve never felt pain like this before. It’s razor-sharp and cuts like it may never go away because just when it recedes, it comes back, stabbing in a whole new place. I’m in pain, like everyone here is in one way or another. Everyone but Ray. I’m told when he died, there was no pain. He left us in an instant, like he closed his eyes and went to sleep, and that, at least, is something we can be happy about. Or as happy as we can be.”

Someone lets out a weepy hiccup, and I think it’s my mom.

I tell everyone how much Ray loved teaching and coaching. I tell them how he enjoyed being a dad. How his favorite thing was drinking imaginary tea from plastic pink teacups and dressing as Cinderella when the girls wanted to play princesses. I tell them how fun he was to grow up with and how awful, like the time he locked me in a steamer trunk, convincing me he could perform a magic trick and make me disappear. Everyone laughs.

I read off some of his favorite movies and songs. I tell them about how he sang all the time and never forgot to send me a sympathy card on the anniversary of the death of the hermit crab he’d given me when I moved to New York City. “I can’t even keep plants alive, so I don’t know why he thought I would keep a crab alive. But it’s probably why he got it for me, because he knew I wouldn’t, and he’d be able to taunt me about it in perpetuity. I guess now he and Captain Hook may be hanging out together as we speak, so the joke’s on him.”

I raise my head, met with a sea of sad smiles and red eyes.

I blink, clearing my own eyes, and go on without the paper. “The past couple of days, I’ve learned a lot about the heart. I’ve learned it’s the strongest muscle in the body. And that it can break into a million pieces, yet the body will still go on. I’ve learned one second, the heart can work perfectly normally, and the next, it stops. I was told my brother’s heart was enlarged, and you could argue it was literally and figuratively enlarged because he had so much love to give. Although, I’m not so philosophical about it. I’m mad. I’m really fu?—”

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