She just lays there still with a crooked smile holding a bouquet of roses in her cold hands. The accentuated brightness in her cheeks is all I can notice over anything else. It's three in the afternoon and I can only imagine the sun to be hot on her skin as she lays there motionless. I now in this point of time stand in front of a crowd holding up a piece of paper that was previously compulsively folded to about as small as I could possibly get it. Honestly I never ever wanted to open it again.

Their eyes all fixated on me, drawing for an emotional response. I felt an overwhelming responsibility to say what the others could not but even then I found myself drifting into a daze of absolute apathy. My mind was far too withdrawn, I must confess. I sought refuge behind my own eyes. I felt the distance becoming me. I found myself taking in the scenery, I wanted to remember the day as it was and nothing more. My tendency to romanticize has left my eyes sore.

All I could think was everything seemed so green and it was far too bright given the circumstance at hand. The trees looked young with age and I thought it to be kind of ironic given where I'm at. Honestly I wanted so dreadfully bad for God to cry when I could not. I felt wrong for not shedding a single tear when she passed, but never did I question that I was the one who was shook the most.

So here I am utterly numb examining the stitches on a suit I've worn once prior. This suit once tied with wonderful memories of the sacred bond of my parents marriage, now tainted with a day that shall only be recalled as a day of departure. I asked why but thought it to be all too meaningless, a gesture almost but I thought what was the point of it all? no one could ever possibly tell me what this all could mean, they lacked the proper experience to do so.  Death shook the hearts of so many, what made me so special? My overwhelming feeling of self importance played sweet delusions in my head, suddenly I was alone among many, and lacked the ability to connect with anyone truly. From that point on I was acting.

I felt so very alone and saw it as a product of an unfair Gods doing. Nothing on this earth could have made my hands stop sweating in the heat of it all, almost as if they were crying when my eyes could not. The paper I was holding became smeared with sweat and what I wrote was barely even legible after that. My mouth is so dry and my throat won't stop choking up, I can barely speak.  

I look to the crowd and draw no emotional response, I am so alone, I see this now. The echo of despair bounces against the walls of my mind, it's settling in all at once and I begin to lose my ability to even talk. The priest comes to relieve me of this heavy task of reading underneath such emotional pressure and guides me to my seat. I am shaking and he takes what I wrote to honor her, the least I could have done after all she did for me was finish reading that **** letter!

He carries on in my place, his intentions I like to believe were pure while assisting me onto this next branch of my life, he could have never known the branch was bound to break, he could have never known how his actions would traumatize me. With that seemingly kind gesture of finishing my speech in my place, he started the beginning of all my irrational fears, he instilled my phobia of accomplishment. Echoing louder than all the other nonsense fears and delusions that found themselves bottled up in the new found battleground that was my head. He was a scapegoat to direct all the blame and give me a reason, if I couldn't read one measly letter and give that speech I wrote to honor her departure, how could I ever accomplish anything ever? The one thing I needed to do I couldn't even finish, I was weak and I knew it. Absolutely and completely unprepared for the conditioning that was to take place in the near coming future. I was nothing without her and I knew that, deeper now than ever before.

I can only describe the feeling as when you're having a nightmare and you become so afraid you wake up in shock, shaking in fear, but I couldn't wake up no matter what I did. I pinched myself to add to the cruel concrete of reality, to assure myself all of this was real and with doing so I felt a grave dread sinking in me when I didn't wake in a fright that I so desperately craved, I was stuck here in this no good reality. My life had become an on going paralysis from that point on.

The funeral progression came and went and the woman I once saw as my mother was just a memory and a fading one at that. I didn't know what I felt, there was an indistinct numbness and I couldn't really understand any of my emotions. It was my first time experiencing true apathy. I kissed her still cheek warmed by the harsh sun, threw soil on the coffin and watched as the people left to go on with their lives, maybe I should have followed in their steps but as she sank into the ground apart of me did as well.

I wen't through the motions that were to come. I made appearances and I shook so many hands, shared countless embraces, so many forms of condolences offered my way but I could feel nothing. I was a hand to hold and a mask to bury all your guilts. I must have been a skilled actor or everyone is as self absorbed as I was. They lacked the empathy to understand how anyone besides their selves felt. No one knew how truly empty I was becoming.

I wore a mask, first of many I must say, see you needed to be able to act just to avoid people using you. They didn't ask how I was holding up because of general concern, they only asked to put their own guilt at rest, go through the motions and pretend to be sad, so they don't feel like the horrible people they actually really are. Maybe I picked up on all that guilt and transcended the mold of my own emotional limits but it was hopeless.

They related everything to themselves and how they felt about it, they seemingly had the mental capacity of apes and were all trapped in their heads just as much as I was. Thinking back nothing existed during that time to fix how I felt, or mend all the pain I had been feeling.

Many condolences were offered and the fridge filled more and more with food that my increasingly lacking appetite and the settling sickness I felt in my gut telling me this was all wrong. "How could food possibly make the loss of a life better?" I thought resentfully.
I looked for a place to direct all the blame I could but was left with finger pointing back at me, I was alone, grieving and all I could feel was overwhelming guilt. A guilt so astounding, so large of a package, I could compare it to holding the sun on your shoulders, with immense weight and searing hot pain coursing through my veins. A weight so crushing it felt like I was going to be obliterated into dust scatted across the far corners of the cosmos in a single second. I kept feeling like I was going to break any second but held a calm composure as if it were my job. Now the obvious answer was to find an escape, to redirect this madness, to give relief to the anguish I had felt. I didn't want to ever feel pain of that caliber ever again, and I was going to do everything to assure that but how I ask.. How could one ever have a clear conscience, when they felt guilty for things they had not even done?