I was only eleven, and I was a liar, and I was tired of hospital beds and crying people and mysterious smells and sounds and flowers and hymn-singing and useless tacky balloons that only wasted space, wilting and deflating after only a few days, and crumpling to the linoleum into a shiny crinkled fifteen-dollar piece of trash.
(I thought it was beautiful, but it was such a waste because of course you never noticed.)
The February outside was damp and indecisive, spring one day and winter back the next, but I would have much rather been out on the freezing cold lawn than in that tension-filled room of white. Finally, I could stand it, once you were home (still in that mechanical bed, but at least you were in a room with a beautiful stained glass window and forest green carpet dusted with dog hair) on that last night - though of course we could not know it was the last while we stood in that golden room and sang you to sleep.
It was terrible-awful to see my father cry in his father's old navy suit to be sitting, numb and nonchalant in the first pew right in the front of the church right where your slate grey coffin lay draped in the glorious red white and blue. And to know that I had lied when I walked out that door into the star-sparkled night because even while I loved you and love you still I didn't say goodbye that night.