I hadn't cried at the funeral.
At the wake people were chatting to each other. Some were laughing, some making chit chat, catching up with old friends or family they haven't seen since the last one.
I was talking nervously to a distant relative about what exactly it was I was did and was going to do and half heartedly asking them the same questions. To end the conversation I said
"well, I'm ummm just going to go over to the buffet, hmmm"
more of a stall than anything. I wouldn't be expected to talk when I was consuming food.
I looked at the spread and focused on the sausage rolls. Small and not quite brown, not quite yellow - definitely gray in the middle.
They always stuck me a such a prosaic food to have at events like this. After the catharsis and tears of a funeral you're greeted with "party" food familiar to you from the first gathering you went to as a child. Maybe they're a sure sign, along with seeing everyone else who's mourning, that life goes on, no matter how devastated you are, no matter how much everything hurts.
I had felt nothing all day.
But I continued to stare at the sausage rolls. Lumpen, sweaty and unappealing. They looked pathetic.
And it was like the dam burst inside of me. Whatever I'd been using to hold myself together had been pulled away. I started shaking and walked quickly into the empty room next to the main hall.
I was already crying by the time I slumped down on a chair. It was the first time I had cried in years.I cried for everyone I'd lost and would never see again. I cried for the parts of my life that had gone or changed and for the futility of wanting them back. I cried because I knew that I could never make the time I spent with people any better than it was, I could never have made it any different and I could never get it back.
And eventually I just cried.
It was as if i was sititng comfortably sitting at the back of my head whilst my body went about the business of crying. I began to wonder when I would stop. I knew I could if I wanted to but I was deciding o carry on. I needed to. I disappeared for a while - went for a holiday in my head and came back at a later date.
I don't know how long I'd been sitting there but at some point I had stopped crying. I got up and went to the bathroom to clear myself up. My eyes were red but apart from that my complexionw as normal. I was ok.
I splashed my face with water and returned to the main room. I walked to the buffet and took a plate, loading it with sausage rolls as many as I could. It seemed like the right thing to do.
