Joy at the Funeral

Joy never liked her name. She didn't feel particularly joyful most of the time. On the other hand, for part of the time on most days she felt pretty good. She had two small children, a husband with a decent job, and she herself worked part-time in retail. She was thirty years old.

They had moved to Ashleyville the year before when Ken took a job as an accountant with the Ashleyville Savings Bank. They had a pleasant two-storey home that was over a hundred years old. Joy liked that; the age of her house made her feel like part of history, like a real citizen of this old town.

Everything was all right and sometimes much more than all right. And then something happened. The man living across the street, a man in his forties, died suddenly. He had four children and a wife. One day he was out mowing his lawn, and the next day he was dead. His name was Hal. Hal Smith. Joy knew the Smiths enough to wave at them, but they had not socialized. The Smith children were older than her Marian and Arthur, but not old enough to babysit, just old enough so that they were not going to become playmates.

Joy picked up the newspaper from the front steps that Monday morning. She already knew that Hal Smith had died. They had heard the ambulance in the middle of the night, and her neighbor Kelly told Joy the bad news the next day. Now, opening the newspaper Joy turned to the obituaries. There it was, the details of her neighbor's life, and the information about the calling hours at the Gustafson Funeral Home. Guess they had to go. That very night.

Joy had been shielded from death. Her parents were alive, her friends were alive, and she had never met her grandparents, so she didn't mourn them, though she occasionally wondered about them. She wondered about them again as she drank her coffee. And she remembered the only funeral she had ever been to.

When she was four, her mother's distant cousin Sophie died. For some reason her mother felt obligated to go to the funeral, and so she drove many miles to another town with Joy to the funeral home, and to the funeral, and to the cemetery. The memories of that day were still vivid: the still body in the casket, the long funeral service in the big, stone church, the cemetery. Joy remembered the hole in the ground, the flowers she and the other mourners threw into the hole, the casket being lowered, the dirt flying on top of everything, flowers and the big box that she knew contained her mother's cousin Sophie, a woman Joy had never met.

The memory of that one funeral stayed with Joy throughout her childhood and even now that memory chilled her and frightened her. Yet she had not known Sophie.

And now it was time to go to a funeral home again, more than twenty-five years after her first terrifying experience. And again, she didn't really know the person who had died.

That evening, Joy and Art said goodbye to Marian and Arthur and Nancy, the high-school student who would be watching the children for an hour or so. The funeral home was not far away. Joy tried to be brave. After all, she had hardly known Hal Smith, and she barely knew his wife or his children. But there were things a person had to do, and this was one of them.

Joy was silent while Ken drove. She was replaying in her mind Cousin Sophie's funeral so many years ago. Why had her mother taken her? Did Mom think Joy would not remember that day? And yet it was her most vivid memory, still filling her with dread.

Joy grabbed Ken's arm as they entered the funeral home. There was the family, dutifully lined up near the open casket. Joy tried not to look at the body of her lawn-mowing neighbor, but she couldn't help herself. Waxen, still, strange, expressionless, just like Cousin Sophie had been. And suddenly Joy started to cry. She couldn't stop as she approached the family, the new widow, her children, even the parents of the dead man.

The widow seemed moved by Joy's tears. "Don't cry, dear. I remember you. You live across the street, don't you? It's all right. We're going to be OK. We're strong."

"I, I am so sorry. I don't know what came over me."

"It's all right." The widow patted Joy's arm.

Ken seemed embarrassed. "What's wrong with you?" he asked, scowling at the car he was about to open. "You don't even know these people."

Joy slid into her seat, still crying. "I don't know. I remember the funeral I went to when I was a little girl. It's haunted me ever since. But it's more than that. I'm not crying for the Smiths. I'm crying for me."

Ken started the car. "For you? You're healthy. We're all healthy. Nothing to worry about."

"Mrs. Smith thought there was nothing to worry about, and now she's a widow with kids to raise and hours and maybe years of loneliness to face. That can happen to anyone. That's why I'm upset. It could happen to me or to you. You never know. That's what my mother used to say."

Ken leaned over and put his arm around Joy. "You're right. Things can happen. Some scenarios are too awful to think about. Maybe there's a lesson here."

"What?"

"Don't take little kids to funerals. Be grateful for every day. Sounds trite, I know. But it's true. And finally, when bad things happen, try to be strong. Promise?"

Joy's sobs were becoming softer and less frequent. "OK. Promise. Well, at least I'll try."

"Just try living up to your name. There's a reason you were given that name."

"Maybe there was."

By Anita G. Gorman

From: United States

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