The funeral really was an abysmal proceeding
as it should have been.
Closed casket.
The car that had hit him had nearly torn off his face
and no amount of mortician magic would make it lay straight.
Only his dog had been able to recognize him when they wheeled his body out of the ambulance for ID.
His parents wept,
well, his mother did;
his father did that thing real men do,
where they try and hold it together
so it looks like they're constipated.
I felt for them.
I did.
But it occurred to me that, what, what, what,
could anyone put in this boy's eulogy?
He had been an average student, which was fine,
he had been average at sports, that was fine.
He was no more or less boisterous than other kids in class-
oh, and the whole class had shown up to his funeral, though
if you asked,
I bet half of them wouldn't have known his last name.
At least,
not before it had shown up in the papers.
He was like the rest of us,
so there wasn't much to say.
It made me sad.
The only thing he had ever made,
the only thing most of us had ever made,
was a parade of poorly worded statuses and tweets.
That was it.
That was his legacy.
The preacher said he was devoid of life.
We knew we had never lived.
This is fiction, but inspired by a torrent of similar events and every day home room musings. I don't know. Maybe he had made a paper airplane every once in a while, which is almost hopeful.