Scare the Light Away by Vicki Delany

bathroom sounded overhead. Instead of heading back to the bedroom once the toilet was flushed and the water turned off, his footsteps moved into the kitchen.
    Morning.
    The morning of my mother’s funeral.
    I still didn’t have a speech. But I had a lot to think about.
    ***
    The church was full, nearly standing room only. It was a small church, to be sure, for a small community. When Ray’s grandmother died at age 102, the huge cathedral was almost deserted and the aging priest’s voice echoed around and around in the cavernous chamber. At the time I thought that there is not much in life sadder than the funeral of someone so old that they have outlived all friends and most relations.
    My mother’s coffin rested at the front of the church, surrounded by stiff, formal bouquets, the wood buffed so highly that one could see one’s face in it. If anyone was brave enough to put their face that close.
    The minister droned on. I paid no attention, thinking of nothing but Ray’s funeral. There is something sadder than an empty funeral, and that is the funeral of a man so young that everyone he worked with, the men on his recreational sports teams, his wife’s colleagues, even neighbors and old school friends, pack the tiny funeral parlor and spill out into the hallway. Ray had had no religious beliefs, having abandoned the Catholic church long ago. His death had been so sudden, and threw me into such shock, that I exerted no control over anything that happened in the few days after. His sister arranged for her own priest to perform the service, although the man had never met Ray. My husband would have hated every second of his own funeral.
    Sharp elbows in the ribs from Dad on one side and Shirley on the other. Time to pull out of remembrances. I was on.
    I climbed the two steps to the lectern, cleared my throat, wiped my palms on the skirt of my designer suit, and wrung the white cotton handkerchief I’d found in the back of my mother’s dresser drawer between my hands. And spoke my mother’s eulogy.
    I didn’t have any notes, having never managed to prepare a speech. So I spoke from my heart. About the dog on the bed and how angry that would have made her. And about the modest bank account she kept untouched so that all the money would be there for me when I was ready to go to university. How she sat up late helping me fill in forms for the scholarships I needed to supplement the bank account. About her bus trips to Toronto to visit me. And about her joy in seeing the sea again after so many years, the first time she came to visit me in Vancouver.
    I returned to my seat in a daze and Dad gripped my hand as I sat down.
    At last it was over. The family filed out first, as was the custom, and stood blinking in the soft sunlight falling on the fresh green grass. The carefully tended flowerbeds were bursting to life in carpets of purple and yellow and white crocuses. A handful of adventurous tulips and daffodils struggled to push their fragile, soft moss-green heads above the rich black earth.
    New life all around me. Birth of a different sort—plants pushing themselves free of the dark comfort of the nurturing soil and into the wider, welcoming world.
    Death is a part of life .
    The cotton handkerchief, well worn to begin with, was now in shreds. Full of my own pain, I paid no attention to the river of mourners pouring out of the church. The family, even the great-grandchildren, lined up beside me to shake hands. But I didn’t see my brother Jimmy.
    Liz’s husband, the reclusive Ralph, did put in an appearance. He stood beside me on the lawn, all four hundred some pounds of him. The man was a mountain. A short, fat mountain, constantly wiping rivers of sweat from his forehead. It was a sunny but cool spring day. I didn’t want to be around to see Ralph in the heat of summer.
    We drove in a dark procession to the graveside. Funerals should always be held in the rain, the colder and heavier the better. But for my