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Confessions of a Greif Whore pt6 before/after So I went to the fuckin' visitation. Pulled into dark parking lot, taking the last place, clamboring out to see faces I did not know. Went into the funeral home and hung up my coat. From the chapel a cacaphony of insanity rang out, people laughing in one corner, crying in another, loud talking, wailing of lost souls. It seemed to be a taste of what I once thought the afterlife may be, with mad souls everywhere. Chaos and no sense. And all around, walking on two legs, misty memories from childhood. I scrawled my name on the guestbook, seeing that everyone had signed their names properly with address except me, and my scribble looked like a six year old's. I didn't leave my address. The writing by hand thing, why bother. I looked about the room, and there was nothing that matched. People in their Sunday best, those in jeans and t-shirts. Baseball caps. A girl in a spiked and colored mohawk. Jabbering everywhere. Noise. Laughter. Crying. I saw the older brother and the casket. I walked up to grey casket and saw that it had a container full of sharpies attatched to it. All over the casket were scrawling and scribblings of friends and family. It struck me like children playing with a corpse in a fit of moroseness. It disturbed me, seemed wrong in some way, but other than that strange image of the community allowing its children to play in and around a dead body. Every visitation I've been to, there was a sense of decorum around the casket. Here, people milled about it, and wrote on it occaisionally. Some simply stared at the closed box. I saw a high school classmate and said hi. His eyes were blank and seeing in the distance. His gaze hit me and slid off. I paid my respects, whatever, said a prayer and moved on through the milling crowd, found the older brother. He was drifting, turing to again look at the pictures that were arrayed in a montage of the deceased. A friend was watching over him, and turned him to meet me. "My condolences," I said. He was mercifully drugged up. "Thank you...I'm sorry, but I don't know your name." he said. We knew each other rather well. "Arg." I said. "Arg...," he said. "Argentum." I said my full name. "Argentum! Oh my god!" he said hugging me, and holding my hand where it was as we shook hands, which ended up being around my balls. Really, really close to my balls. I had to move my hips back to avoid a shaking hand into my scrotum. And he kept clutching me, in front of this crowd, and I'm standing there, trying to keep my balls off of the bereaved. And besides, I don't like that stuff anyway. So I disengaged gracefully. Moved to the back, found some friends and sat by them. Faces poured in through the door. People I haven't seen since graduation. Memories on two legs. Moments passed and almost forgotten. Nostalgia in faces appearing in funeral chapel doors. And the "sharing of memories" started, with the father going up to the microphone and imploring everyone who was there to sign the casket. (I didn't like that) Then he shared some memories. Then others came up. Lots of bad poetry. Lots of preaching and finger wagging, "don't kill yourself," Nervous laughter and awkward silences. Sobbing into the tinny microphone. Then one kid got up and told a strange story. "One time, we were going to the mall, and harry was with us, and he was in the back, and he was all like, 'I want to smoke a ciggarette' and I said 'no', and he said 'c'mon' so I said 'I don't like the smell, we're going to drive with the windows down' and he's like, 'okay', and it was cold out like it is now, so he smoked his smoke, y'know all really quick, and says'I'm done, roll up the windows,' and I'm like...'no'...(laughter)...and we kept drivin' and I looked back in the back seat, and he had, like, ice-cicles hanging off his face." Which ends up being a story about abusing the deceased. Beautiful. And I sat there thinking, "Yeah, no wonder, with friends like you, he killed himself." More memories ensued until it petered out to an awkward silence. The family again implored all who were present to sign the casket. Again it made my skin crawl a bit. Another silence as everyone figured out it was done. Then everyone moved to the walls and clustered. The cacaphony started again. I did not like it. Nostalgia on two legs milling about a funeral parlor chapel all around me. Blank greif stricken faces and sliding glances of non-acknowledgement, and those who seemed to treat it as an excuse for a high-school reunion. I turned to my friend, after checking on another. "I've gotta' get some food into me. I've had enough of this bull-shit." I said. I felt disgusted and unhappy. And I strode out to the hall, grabbed my jacket, as the faces of childhood nostalgia swept around me in a cacaphonous tide, stared straight ahead with tunnel vision, and walked out the door. Past the smokers, into the parking lot and went home filled with a weird sense of regret and unhappiness.
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