The hardest thing I've ever had to do

A Story by Aideen Casey

2046 words.

‘It’s not happening.’

‘You’ve been saying that for the past hour,’ says Katelyn with a sorrowful note to her voice.

I tilt my head up at her, brushing the strands of loose hair away from my view. Her face is concerned, with a hint of doting at my naiveté, just to soften the air.

‘It’s not, though,’ I remonstrate, strumming aimlessly at my guitar strings.

Katelyn maturely turns away wordlessly, not feeding my mulishness. She combs back a curtain of her blonde locks and continues looking at my laptop, the glow of the screen brushing off her face as she scrolls through a website displaying guitar songs.

‘I’ve never performed in front of a huge crowd before,’ I claim with an increasing volume to my voice.

Katelyn pauses and observes my foolishness with narrowed eyes.

‘Marla, you’ve played in front of the whole school before.’

‘But that was with the choir �" I’ll be alone. And it’s not just random people from school watching, who may or may not know me �" everyone I know will be watching and they’ll all be thinking ‘oh, how nervous and worried she looks, poor girl,’ and ‘what a brave little thing she is-’’

‘That’s because you are brave,’ Katelyn sternly retorts, knowing that I’ll take that as a lie rather than a compliment.

‘It’s not a matter of whether I’m brave or not,’ I tell her. ‘It’s just not going to happen. Plain and simple.’

I notice the compassionate glint in Katelyn’s eye beginning to dull �" hopefully she’ll become weary by my stubbornness and eventually give up.

‘Marla, your mom called me because she wanted my help. She said you refused to do a song, tomorrow.’

‘I am refusing to do a song, tomorrow,’ I confirm.

Worry blooms on her face again. She swallows firmly and sits back in my swivel chair with her arms crossed, poised for thinking.

‘How about Greenday?’ she suggests, her eyes alight with just a pinch of hope, or at least trying to be. ‘They have some good guitar ballads- or maybe one by Bob Dylan or John Lennon or something.’

She optimistically straightens her spine as she begins to key into the search engine. As her fingers scurry across the keyboard, I notice her bright-purple varnish matted onto her nails, triggering something ugly to rise at the back of my throat. I refuse to discern what it is, but it’s a grisly, jarring sensation. Even when she finishes typing, my eyes remain transfixed on her purple-polished nails, softly reflecting the gleam of the computer’s light.

Nausea unfurls inside me. It feels like I’m on a bad high that has entirely flipped my mood and perspective.

I hear something in the background: Katelyn saying my name. I can barely hear her voice. I realise it’s because my breathing is so loud its trampling every other sound that surrounds us. It almost sounds thunderous.

I repeatedly lug it in and out through my nostrils until it becomes painful with its exacerbating speed, as if the air is grating the inside of my nose. My neck finally hauls my head up to see Katelyn, to see that sympathetic flicker in her eye �" that sheen that repeatedly tells me: ‘It’s okay �" I’m here to help’, even though she can’t. What does she think I am? A five year old who’s lost their sweets? Whose problems can be solved with a few grieving nods and a face crumpled up to appear empathetic?

‘It’s okay, Marla,’ Katelyn says. ‘I know. I know it’s hard.’

‘You know nothing,’ my monotone voice says.

‘I know- I mean I don’t know,’ she stutters, desperately trying to seem professional.

‘Exactly!’ I say with projection. ‘You actually know nothing. Have you ever had to sing alone in front of one, two hundred people?’

When it hits her that my question isn’t rhetorical she meekly shakes her head.

‘This has never happened to you,’ I definitively say with wry smile. Dry air stings my eyes, as if I haven’t been blinking this whole time. ‘So why don’t you stop acting like you know how it is, because you don’t �" at all!’ I awkwardly begin to snigger at her.

There is a vague streak of hurt across her face, but she quickly redeems herself from it.

‘Alright, alright, Marla,’ she almost inaudibly says, indicating that I should quiet down. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Will you stop saying sorry?!’ I abruptly shriek before she even ended her sentence, triggering her to jump in her seat. I’m not laughing anymore. ‘I mean, why are you even here? I didn’t ask for you to come over!’

All healthy colour has drained from her face, like she’s just awoken a monster. She tightens her jaw, devoting herself to keep any tears at bay.

‘Your mom called me to help you choose a song,’ she says clearing her throat.

I roll my eyes. ‘Maybe you can’t help me,’ I suggest with a frown imprinted on my face �" a new scar. ‘And maybe I don’t need a therapist!’ I shout, throwing my guitar against my shelves of books, causing it to snap off the headstock and pluck off two of the strings. The remaining strings are still alive, resonating hauntingly. With that, the shelves collapse and crush it, replacing the sound with silence.

I don’t look at Katelyn, but I can hear her tears rolling. My eyes stay fixed on the remaining shatters, hoping she’ll just go away.

I don’t know how long we sit for. It may be two minutes, maybe half an hour, but she eventually leaves without a word. It felt like a mist was grimly creeping up on us the whole time.

My reflection stares at me in the window. My brown hair is scraggly, as if it joined in on my precedent anger, whereas my eyes are sunken with grey arcs below them. Beyond my reflection rain is pouring down in torrents and I see Katelyn running out with her hood up, hurriedly trying to get home.

I lie on my bed, which feels like a frozen tabletop. It only takes a few seconds to pass the shivering cold to me, dissipating in my blood like a bad drug that courses through me. It’s washing over me like a cold wave. Maybe I’ll drown. Then I can’t experience pain anymore.

I feel sick again �" like misery and despair are twining inside me to form a knot in my chest �" like my heart is jacknifing in my chest with every beat. It’s rushing cheerless blood around my body �" bringing gloom to every cell. I wish it would end so I could stop crying �" so I could stop feeling this way. Even just for a minute. It hurts so badly.

I have no notion of time. I must have been lying here for hours because it’s dark outside. A pain is flaring up my spine, probably because I’ve been facing the window in a foetal position for so long. I think there were some knocks on my door earlier. Maybe my mom or my dad came in and saw me and just left. I don’t know what’s real and what’s not anymore.

I ease my way up to straighten my back but feel blood running from my head when I stand. I need to sit down lest I faint, so I sit at my desk.

It’s one of those times in the night when not a single sound flows through the air and all that can be heard are your own thoughts. I fetch some paper and start scribbling.

* * * *

It’s still raining. We’re all under an old, oak tree, some sitting and some standing, in, basically, a small field. I think they were going for “peaceful” when my parents chose this spot, but the headstones looming around us make my stomach lurch.

Usually the mountains can be viewed in the far distance, a patchwork quilt with their smooth flow and their square, multicolour fields, but today the billows of menacing clouds dispelling waves of miniscule raindrops (the kind that gradually leave you horribly damp) overshadow them �" a grisly canopy. It would have been nice if they didn’t �" it’s clever to have the mountains in sight at a place like this. It reminds you that they’re going far away, but maybe a beautiful place is waiting for them �" even more beautiful than the mountains.

I take a few steps, my footing uneven and weak, up to where the minister stands. He has a face set like stone for these occasions and using it he gives me a solemn, almost ominous nod, either implying: ‘whenever you’re ready’ or: ‘good luck �" you’re going to need it’.

My head is bowed but, wiping my nose with a soaked handkerchief, I take a glimpse at the crowd. I see Katelyn, whose pink eyes disclose her tears (the raindrops from the leaves above which fall on her cheeks make a fair attempt at concealing them). I need to apologise to her for my outburst yesterday, but I have the feeling that that’ll relinquish even more tears.

I quickly peak at the coffin, too. It has a picture of Robin on top of it. Her green-blue eyes follow you wherever you stand (I don’t know if that’s really the case or if it’s just in my head) and a tiny locket, which was given to her on her first day of school, demurely hangs from her neck. It daintily hangs on the edge of the picture frame 13 years after she got it. Johnny, my little brother, put her phone and a polar bear teddy up next to it. It used to be her bear, but he gradually gained custody of it over the years. I told him that she would have wanted him to keep it, but he insisted on leaving it with her. It’s strange �" my mom told me the same thing about singing today: ‘It’s what she would have wanted.’

A lump which is too heavy to swallow pokes my throat and I’m edgy in hoping that it’ll disappear when I start singing. I take a scrap of college-ruled paper out of my black trench-coat pocket and, wary not to prolong the wet and cold agony of everyone here, I breathe through my nose and sing:

I heard a robin red breast

It made me think of you

That line of freckles on your nose,

Your purple nails, your denim clothes...

My eyes are directed at the piece of wrinkled paper as I continue singing, striving to keep concentrating on the song and not releasing power to the lump in my throat �" so much so that my shivering hands grip it to the tightest degree, nearly tearing the soaked paper. It makes my knuckles white and my arms shaky as I squeeze the paper, but I continue. Two or three tears escape and daintily drop on the page, helping the rain to drain the ink from the scrawled words, loosing colour. My voice quivers a little towards the end, but I’m able to finish, the ink still fleeting as I hastily take my seat, the crowd no longer enabled to see my face.

Johnny quickly wraps his small arms around me and I reciprocate just as fast, feeling and hearing the water squeeze out of his sodden jacket as we hug each other. I can’t look at him, but I kiss him on the head and feel the back of his drenched hair as I stroke it with my hand.

I can’t embellish the experience and say that it has made me stronger. I can’t say that going through denial, anger and depression has made me a better person �" I sincerely doubt it.

I can’t glamorise the funeral. I’m not going to pretend that I actually saw a robin the day she died, or that some kind of butterfly flew in front of me while singing. I’m not going to tell you that when I finished the song, the tears stopped and smiles sprouted on everyone’s faces, or that claps were heard and all was restored.

Funerals are gritty. Life is, too. We can wallow and brood as much as we like, or we can accept it. Funnily enough, that’s my next stage.