I don't understand why a wake should be called a wake. It is absurd. If anything it should be called a sleep or a rest.. anything. Not a wake.
The whole parlor reeked of death. Now I'm sitting here, I had to come back to work, and I feel deathly because I was in the room with the corpse. Deathly isn't the word I wanted to use, but I don't know what else to say.
I didn't want to cry at that wake. It was the first one I had ever been to where I didn't personally know the deceased. So I thought it would be easy. And really it was. Up until all the veterans did the final salute and the taps song played (you know that horn music they always play when a veteran dies.) That was just devastating. I don't know why, it just was. Two tears fell. There was no way of stopping them, I tried so hard.
It's a slap in the face looking into a dead person's face. It's like it's always there the thought of it, but only in thought. When it's right in front of you, it's real. Too real. Too inevitable.
written on 2003-04-01 at 7:30 p.m.
she / lost