I stood alone in front of the ivory casket. Red, white, and blue streamers expansed most of its blinding outer whiteness. She was propped high — too high for my taste — out of the cavernous, hollow mouth of it. She was fresh… as though her last breath had just billowed and if it weren’t for the hint of make-up traipsed across her calm almond skin, it might start again with a gasp. Her green velvet dress shimmered in the intense low-hanging chandelier light: a replacement for passed eyes. They were almost perfect you see.

A dozen others wept around me — seated in industrial beige chairs. Pearly handkerchiefs offset their charcoal mourning garb like a silent war film. In front of the glowing box of death, I stood still in my orange polyester shirt and brown slacks — transfixed by the sudden lack of air and dome-vaulted ceiling. People to my left; people to my right: seated sobbing anonymous faces sobbing the tears of ritual sadness; clothed in the unmistakable scent of living pyres blazing a brand blessing on those less accustomed to a life lost.

I had been driving southbound on the way downtown when I noticed the procession. Alone in the left lane, I slowed to register what a part of me must have previously known. The cars of the 90s: sea green mini-vans, flareside Fords, rear wheel Camaros, and well-worn Mustangs. The puzzle pieced and I joined the line. They were headed for the big Catholic church. Something made me get on that plane. Maybe this was it.

Inside, I saw them all — fragment acquaintances of my past — and knew where I’d been lead. The realization dawned as the lid creaked open: my first girlfriend was going into the ground. The organ blared while the ceiling vaulted twice its size. The statues of Mary, Jesus, and Joseph patiently looked on like Mona Lisa; the stations of the cross circled in an endlessly sculpted loop. I saw them all peripherally, but felt their ire on my neck — the dead eyes stared from everywhere except the eyes I’d come to see without knowing why.

But, her dress gazed back with crippling force. The hands at my sides began to tremble and I placed them around the back of my sweating neck with my elbows swung out like a prisoner of war. I exhaled slowly — trying to gain composure; some grip on the situation, but only more organ was in store. I staggered out of the private grieving capsule and into the dim church full of pews and stained glass. My fumbling hands grazed a pair of dark aviator sunglasses in my right pocket — who knows how long they had been in those pants. I lifted them onto my face and strolled out the front door into the contrast blinding, mid-afternoon light and the rest of my life.