I wasn’t sure whether I would continue talking about it or not, but I figure that it’s better than keeping it bottled up. I have had a rough couple days since the funeral. Part of my problem is that I was trying my hardest to puh away my cousin’s death. It doesn’t seem accurate to say that I was acting as if it hadn’t happened, because in truth I hardly saw this cousin. But I had also tried not to think about it too much since that first week after we learned the news and the nightly prayers had stopped.

I let my dad enter the mortuary first, not so much out of deference as to give myself the ability to react and avoid him by keeping him in sight. Besides, a cousin had texted asking if I could confirm the stream details for the family in Mexico. My aunt was greeting people at the beginning of the room, asking those who felt comfortable to sign in. She talked with my dad a bit, although I couldn’t hear what they said. We talked too, which left me more dazed and confused. She said something about a hat, how they had asked her to bring his favorite hat, she said something about how it didn’t even look like him, how it was a mannequin except his lips matched. I tried my best to be consoling, but I couldn’t make sense in the moment of what she was saying. Someone had convinced her it would be better to let the entire family see his body. I didn’t know how to say that if she truly had faith then shouldn’t she believe that his soul had already left his body, I hoped that it would be comforting, but I figured that if I didn’t know how to say it, it was better to not say anything. Besides, I didn’t believe it myself.

It bears mentioning that I’m going to describe what I saw. I won’t past this paragraph, although I’ll stretch it to say everything I want to say, about the body… I walked up to the open casket and looked in, but having heard my aunt refer to a mannequin and processing what was before my eyes, I had trouble recognizing my cousin. I sat in the front row, but could not stare in from where I sat. At some point an aunt and I slipped away to get dinner, tuning into the same livestream as our relatives in Mexico to follow along with the program. I asked her to clarify and she confirmed that he was indeed in the casket. I got a chance later on in the evening to stare in though and, in looking back and forth between a photograph and his body, I finally recognized his lips. There was little else there however, as his hair had fallen out in the two months his body had rested in the morgue. He was young and his dad fairly smooth, so he had no facial hair yet, but I wondered what my own jawline would have looked like if it was me instead and my beard had fallen out, my head covered by a baseball cap instead. That’s when I noticed that his jawline had been reconstructed. It was like the flesh from his chin to his neck had been peeled up, stretched, and then pulled down past his neck. It wasn’t obvious at first as it followed the contours of his neck, but once I saw the first ridge I noticed more. I wasn’t sure if it was related to the embalming process or the accident itself, but it snapped into reality that before me was in fact a dead body, pale flesh and hairless.

Having to sit still for the viewing confirmed that I wouldn’t be able to sit through mass the next day. It reminded me of how much trouble I had having to sit still in class, hour after hour in grade school. By the time I had gotten to college, I had learned I needed to burn off a lot of the nerves to rest easy, focus, and pay attention. The morning of the wake I couldn’t get up and had not gone out for a run. I stayed in bed till just past noon, not sleeping, scrolling through social media trying to think about anything but the funeral. I had enough time for a short walk but had to leave before traffic really picked up toward the Inland Empire. By the time I had sat down in the front row with the aunts and on time cousins, my leg had started to twitch. Without a doubt it was nerves, but if the stillness of a viewing was getting to me, what hope did I have to make it through the mass.

There were moments of tenderness during the wake. I held my cousin in my arms as he cried for his lost brother. My uncle’s sisters rushed to his side as he wept over the closed casket. The next day, these moments continued during and after the funeral, the family coming together to grieve. We even got together after the funeral at my aunt’s house and at some point, all the 20-year old cousins were gathered out front, drinking beers and laughing over our now buried cousin’s twitter. Our lives didn’t end there though and the days that followed, away from that familial cocoon have been rough.

Since I couldn’t be with them, with those specific family members, I withdrew. I still went to work the day after the funeral. Or maybe it was the Thursday after, because I distinctly remember talking to my supervisor and he is only in the office on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We talked about the randomness of life and how unexpected this is. He cried a bit and I just wasn’t able to get there myself. That’s what it was. See, I had gone to work on Wednesday and around lunch had to excuse myself, went to my favorite coffee shop near work, Patria, and cried in my car. So, the next day, I had been crying and well before my supervisor getting teary-eyed, I had seen how bloodshot my eyes looked.

The emotional space my supervisor created for me at work contrasted perfectly with the space someone I had recently been talking to had refused to create for me. In casual conversation on the Wednesday after the funeral, this young man had let me know that if I say a certain day is a possibility to meet, it would be helpful to follow up. I told him I understood and let him know that I had had the funeral and needed to take care of myself. I clarified that if I had said that Saturday was certainty, I would certainly have reached out to cancel, but was too distracted to remember a possibility. He said he understood but felt that the maybe still warranted me reaching out. At that point I had looked at the prior messages to see if I had possibly been unclear, but the prior messages still read as me asking to confirm later in the week if we were set for Saturday. He pressed on and said communication is important, that he is not just some guy I am having sex with and that for him friendship was more important than anything else. I apologized to him for feeling stood up but let him know I truly did not even remember well enough to reach out. As this back and forth seemed likely to continue, I stopped apologizing and let him know that he was prioritizing his assertion that communication needed to happen over the context of my situation and that this continued insistence was quickly becoming rude, despite it initially being a valid concern. His next message was still about the Saturday, he hit me with the classic “I’m sorry if you feel that way, but…” So my next message back was to let him know I didn’t have the emotional bandwidth for the level of engagement he wanted and wished him a good day.

Between these two contrasts, I am happy to say that most people have been on the end closer to my supervisor. As I doubted my judgement and have a history of putting my walls up too quickly, I showed the texts to a friend and to a cousin, both who seemed annoyed at how quickly the young man had moved on from me letting him know about a funeral in my family. It is in coping with these small annoyances that I’m pleased to see how I have grown, even if my responses are not always perfect. That’s something to focus on as I try to move on beyond this death in the family.