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This is the third funeral Clara has been to in her life. This is the third funeral dress she’s owned, as she’s had growth spurts between all three of the deaths. Even though they were all within a span of the past two years.
When her mother died, the first funeral, it was Elena– at the time just a "dear friend" of her father’s– who took her to buy her first ever funeral dress and shoes and twisted her hair up into a tight ballerina bun the morning of the burial. She told her it was okay to cry, but if she cried for too long it’d make her eyes puffy and she wouldn’t want that. The second funeral was her grandmother’s, whom she hadn’t seen since her mom’s funeral anyways. It wasn’t a monumental loss. Once again, Elena took her to buy a dress, a pair of shoes, and contained those crazy curls of hers on top of her head.
But this time, Elena wasn’t there to help her. Elena was the one in the coffin.
The dress from her grandmother’s funeral still fit for the most part, but it was very short on her. She put a pair of tights on underneath and paid no mind to it. The shoes were easily two sizes too small, but what was she to do? It was either wear them and suffer a little– Elena would’ve made her go with this option– or wear her favourite, comfortable, red high tops, the ones that almost matched her hair. Who was going to stop her? No one was even paying any attention to her.
She also didn’t understand how to get her hair up in what she’d come to know as a funeral bun. She didn’t even know how to try. So, she didn’t. She left it the way Elena always hated and the way she herself always liked– unbrushed, untied, untamed. Elena had been talking about taking her to the salon to get it cut soon. But, then Elena died. She didn’t have to get a haircut now. She was good at finding what benefitted her most in every situation, even at her young age.
Meanwhile, across town, this is the third funeral Luisa has been to in her life too… if you counted the funeral her and her brother planned and hosted for their pet fish when he died in the spring. In her mind, it counted; they stood around the toilet bowl, said nice words, and ceremoniously flushed his lifeless, fish body away. The funeral before that was her mother’s. She preferred not to think about that.
She wasn’t necessarily sad that Elena died, she had never really liked her if she was honest. She was sad for Rafael, they now shared the same, unfortunate fate of being children without mothers. His little 4-year-old heart had already grieved her, when she walked out the door before he could blow out his birthday candles, but now it was a permanent loss. She was not going to come back. Just like Luisa’s own mother was not going to come back. Their dad and each other were all they had now.
“You look pretty,” Raf tells her shyly.
“You look pretty handsome yourself,” Luisa tells him, tying his tie for him and fixing his hair with her fingers. She plants a kiss on his forehead and feels his smile expand in her hands.
He yawns. It’s early, too early for this. As immediate family, they’re obligated to be there earlier than everyone else so they can be there when her casket is closed. This would be the first time Luisa had seen an open casket, her mother never had one; the police said they wouldn’t want to see her body, given the way she died. Again, she preferred not to think about that. (She did anyways. It gave her bad dreams sometimes. She told no one. She hoped Raf would tell her if he had bad dreams now that his mom was dead, though. It was her job as big sister to hug him and remind him that they were only dreams, they weren’t real. All the things she told herself when she woke up sad and scared and missing a mother she didn’t even consciously remember.)
Not many people came to this morning thing. In fact, for the first 15 minutes, no one at all came. Then, a tall, round father and his redhead, sneaker-wearing daughter showed up, looking like they were late. They were late. Luisa glanced indignantly at the girl’s shoes– they were bright red and dirty, her hair was both of those things too– had she never been to a funeral before? Luisa couldn’t guess her age. As she tried, the child came towards her.
“Sorry ‘bout your mom.”
A noise of near disgust escapes Luisa’s throat. “She wasn’t my mom. She wishes she was.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, my dad told me you were Rafael’s sister, I just thought–” She shakes her head. “I wonder if Elena wished she was my mom, too.”
Luisa arches an eyebrow, her brain working overtime to process if she knew who this girl was. If she was this close to Elena, Luisa should know her, right? “How did you know Elena?”
“She was gonna marry my dad, next summer. I heard them in their bedroom the other night… I didn’t think you were allowed to do that before you married.”
Luisa shook her head quickly. “Gross,” she mutters.
“Maybe I’d have a little brother like you do. If Elena didn’t die.”
“Sorry for your loss,” Luisa says, simply echoing the sentiment as she heard the adults say it, emptily.
“I never liked her.”
Her candor and the deadpan tone in which she delivers it with make Luisa laugh. Clara laughs with her. The adults stare. “Girls,” Emilio reprimands them under his breath.
“Sorry Daddy,” Luisa says quietly. Her and Clara share a grin.
“Why don’t you two go sit outside? You can talk out there,” Emilio suggests.
He didn’t mean literally outside, but the girls found themselves sitting on a bench outside the funeral home, staring at rows upon rows of gravestones.
“I kind of like it,” Luisa admits shyly. “It makes me feel close to my mom, even though she isn’t buried here, or in a graveyard at all. She has a wall grave in a big building.”
“My mom is buried here,” Clara says, as if it’s nothing. “Yeah, if you squint you might see her stone. It’s, uh, grey. And down there. I don’t remember where.”
“You… don’t remember where your mom is buried?”
Clara shrugs. “I haven’t gone back since the funeral. I don’t have anybody to go with.”
“Do you… want to? I’ll go with you. We’ll go find her.”
Luisa catches something reflected in Clara’s eyes. It looks like a yes. “Let me just dip inside and tell my dad we’re going for a walk.”
She comes back out with two packets of fruit gummies– she kept them in her jacket for Rafael– and they set out to trudge through the dewy grass in search of a stone labelled Rose Marie Clement Ruvelle. Luisa had to admit, Clara’s sneakers were probably better equipped for this walk than her ballet flats were. She wishes she could’ve gotten away with wearing sneakers today. Elena would roll in her grave.
And a few short minutes later, they’re plopped down in the grass and eating their fruit gummies, hanging out with Rose Marie.
“Marie,” Clara insists. “I never heard anyone call her Rose Marie, or Rose. Rose is pretty, I don’t know why she didn’t like it.” After a moment, she continues. “I don’t want a tombstone.”
“Would you prefer an urn?” Luisa grunts.
“What’s that?”
“If you get cremated your ashes get put in a fancy jar called an urn. Then your parents get to keep you on the fireplace.”
“Oh, I don’t want that either,” she mumbles. “I don’t think I want to die at all.”
No one wants to die, Luisa wants to say. She’d be lying though, because her mom wanted to die. And she’d be lying if she said she didn’t think about it sometimes, how it’d be easier to just… go. But Clara’s too young for all that. She just shrugs.
“Where do you go, when you die?”
“I don’t know,” Luisa says. Just cause I’m eleven doesn’t mean I have all the answers, Clara. “They tell you in church that you go to heaven, or hell. My dad says you go and live in the hearts of all the people who care about you. He told Raf this morning that his mom lives in his heart now. He told me that when my mom died. I like that better, I think.”
Clara nods, looking to Luisa with a childish interest. “I like that,” she decides. “I thought you just stopped existing. I don’t want to stop existing.”
She slumps down in the grass, leaning on her elbows, tilting her head back and feeling the sun on her face. “Maybe it doesn’t matter if I get a tombstone or not. After all, I’ll be dead.”
-
I hope you meant that. There is no grave, my love. There is no tombstone. There’s not even an urn, even though… no, no urn. Nothing at all. You’re just living in my heart now, and I hope that’s enough.