Kitty Rocks the House

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FOR ALL the death I’d seen, I’d been to very few funerals.

This one was fraught, and I couldn’t sort out my feelings, or what I was supposed to be feeling. Grandma Norville had fallen and broken her hip three months ago, but the pneumonia she caught after had been the final culprit. I kept thinking I should have been there. I could have come to visit one more time if I hadn’t been so busy, if I’d just made the effort. But I thought she’d hang on longer. I thought she’d always be here. How selfish was it, to feel guilty at someone’s funeral, as if her passing were somehow my fault, or a personal inconvenience? I was sad, nostalgic, tired, shell-shocked.

Mostly, I was worried about my father. He seemed tall and stoic enough, his chin up, eyes dry. Mom held her arm wrapped around his and kept a tissue close to her eyes. He didn’t seem to be looking at anything, though. Not the flower-drenched casket, not the dark-suited minister, not the sky or grassy lawn with its rows of modern, polished headstones. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. I couldn’t ask.

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