Procession

Procession is a short story about a young adult ruminating about mourning, death and the fleeting nature of our lives. Why do we come together to grieve? Who really misses us when we’re gone? What do we want to leave behind? They ponder all this and more in a few short pages. Read the story below or listen to the audio version narrated by Sarah Kamal.

Discordant piano music played over ageing speakers, echoing through the cathedral. I tried to tune it out and daydream, but the aching in my spine and backside from sitting on the uncomfortable wooden pew was making it next to impossible to think about anything other than where I was. What was the point of cushioning the damn things if the cushions were so thin they might as well not be there?

I was feeling as irritable as I was at a loss. I really wasn’t sure what I was doing there. I wasn’t sure what the point was. It wasn’t like grandma could attend her own funeral. 

Dad sat next to me, eyes forward. He stared unblinkingly at the altar at the front of the church, jaw set firmly, expression straining to be blank. She was only his mother-in-law, but he had always had a deep respect for her. His own parents hadn’t been great people and she had been something of a surrogate when he was in his early twenties and trying to figure his life out. He’d told me often enough, impressed on me how lucky I was to have parents in my life who cared about me as much as he and mum did. 

Why was he here? If this was supposed to be a part of the grieving process, why go if you wouldn’t allow yourself to grieve? I wanted to ask him who he was trying to be strong for, but I already knew the answer. The answer he would give and the answer that was true. He would say it was for mum and me. But really, it was for his pride. He had been raised to believe men don’t cry and had never really shaken those teachings. It was a shame really.

Not that I could really criticise him for not crying. I hadn’t shed a single tear either. It wasn’t that I felt no sadness at all, but I wasn’t grieving. I had come to terms with her death while she was still breathing. I didn’t need this. I didn’t need to be there. I needed to be dedicating my own limited time to myself and the people who were still in my life. I wondered what it said about me that I felt so little sense of loss, that at my grandmother’s funeral my thoughts were on how bothersome the seating was and how I would rather be somewhere else.

I looked around me, at all the suitably sullen faces. How many of them were like me? How many of them were there not to pay respects, but out of obligation, because society told them this is what they had to do. How many of them would really mourn at all? Surely this many people couldn’t all have had a meaningful connection to one old lady. You lost friends as you grew up. It got harder and harder to make more. I was experiencing that at that very moment. It was hard to believe that so many people really cared all that deeply.

Was this what my own funeral would be like? Sixty blank stares looking around a crowded cathedral while crappy music played, most of them really not that bothered by my passing. Some bratty twenty-something in the front row wishing she was out with her dwindling group of friends, or even at work, anywhere but there. Or, maybe, there would be nobody left and nobody would show up at all.

That was a sobering thought.

I could see it in my mind's eye, a gathering of mostly familiar faces in this very cathedral. Some slow instrumental cover of a more upbeat song I love playing, barely audible thanks to the waning quality of speakers that should have fallen apart and been replaced decades prior.

A handful of people in the crowd whispered among themselves, both at the real funeral and the one in my head. I couldn’t make out the words of either even though most people were silent, they were too respectfully hushed. 

In my head, I picked out the people who I actually knew: friends and family. My parents, my closest friends and cousins made up the front row. People I was a little less close to populated the rows behind them. A very similar setup to what my grandmother had in reality. 

My imagination was all wrong though. Unless I died in the very near future, this wouldn’t be the people left behind and mourning. For one thing, my parents would be dead long before me unless there was a freak accident or something. Funny how they were there. It was just hard to imagine a world without them in it, I suppose. But that day would come.

My friends were wrong too. The friends I saw in my head were as they were in the present, young and healthy. If I lived to old age, any of my current friends at my funeral would be old too. Smooth skin and full heads of colourful hair replaced by wrinkles, balding and greyness. Maybe their children would be there, growing up getting to know me. Realistically, they wouldn’t be. Because, realistically, the chances of any of my existing friendships lasting that long were slim at best. People only drift apart as they get older. It’s part of why this whole event felt so hollow.

Again, I found myself wondering who this was really for. What were people really getting out of being there? To say goodbye? There was nobody left to say goodbye to. To mourn? I doubted most of the people here had really had that strong of a bond with my grandmother, and those that did weren’t mourning for the world they were mourning personal loss. Was that the whole point of this? For people to cram themselves into a room and commiserate about the hole in their lives? That didn’t sound like paying respects to me. It sounded like an event that was supposed to celebrate the life of the departed about us.

The music swelled suddenly and people around me were all rising to their feet. The coffin bearers - of which my mum was one - were among us now. I remembered listening to her having a discussion about this moment with my aunt.

My aunt had felt that walking the box down the aisle like this was more of a wedding thing than something suitable for a funeral. My mother had insisted that every person in there should have a moment, seeing the coffin move past and away from them. It was meant to be symbolic. 

At first, I had agreed with my aunt. It did seem a bit silly when we were all going to have a chance to go up to it and say our personal goodbyes to a person who couldn’t hear us later anyway. 

With my thoughts still on my own limited time and potential death, I suddenly felt I kind of got what she was going for with the symbolism. 

The coffin may as well have been empty. There was nobody inside. There was only the shell of a woman who had once been in our lives. For a fleeting moment people are a part of one another's existence and then they’re gone. Maybe they leave of their own accord, or maybe they stick with you until it's the end for one or both of you. 

Nothing lasts forever.

Life is one long funerary procession. From the moment we’re born, we’re marching towards the end of the road like a coffin being carried through a cathedral. We have a very limited amount of time with the people around us, and they with us.

I thought back again to the imagined funeral in my head, and for the first time I felt that I too must mourn. I grieved for time lost and time limited and for the slow decline of every life until all that was left were people feeling sad and sorry for themselves while your body was marched around in a wooden box.

Perhaps, that was really what we were here for. To convince ourselves that our lives matter because there will be people grieving at the end. In that respect, perhaps I shouldn’t have been so judgemental, because I was just another one of the masses marching slowly to my end and hoping someone cares.

Interested in having Sarah lend her vocal talents to one of your projects? You can contact her at Sarahjvox@gmail.com for your narration and voice acting needs.