Every time he went up to the soccer field, Pablo diverted his gaze away from the cemetery. He hated the notion that loved ones could be shelved like discarded possessions, their remains stashed into walls of cubby holes that always reminded him of pigeon roosts or swallow houses. He hated the weathered old photos of dead people smiling from the grave, there to reassure the living they had passed over to a better place. He hated the plastic flowers that, unlike the deceased they were tactlessly intended to honor, would never, ever die. And now that his father was being put into eternal storage there, he hated the cemetery and its ridiculous filing cabinets for the dead even more.
How could his father’s body actually be in that jar? How did they dare do that to him? As if dying in the fire weren’t enough, they had reduced him to ash? It was like seeing an unfinished crime all the way through to its heinous end.
The fact the funeral was taking place on a blue-sky day—a day that in its very essence was a celebration of life, one made for exaltation not lamentation—made the entire experience that much worse. That much less real. His father had existed, now he didn’t. From one day to the next his body wiped clean from the face of the Earth, his ashes swept into a fancy jar about to be locked away forever.
His eyes trained by a lifetime on the trails in the nature reserve, every time a falcon soared across the sky, a songbird landed on a nearby tree limb, Pablo couldn’t help but look. Before he could stop himself, reflexively, he had already identified them. So now he was bird-watching at his father’s funeral.
What were they doing there? Why couldn’t he shut them out, just like he had everything else? How could life continue joyful and uninterrupted all around him—the chirping birds, the fluttering butterflies, the colorful flowers ecstatically turned upward to the sun—oblivious to the devastating death being mourned in its midst? Unjust, unfathomable, irrevocable death.
A huge turnout of well-wishers had come to see his father off, all dressed in their Sunday best. It was an event. Everyone in town knew Antonio, after all. And anyone who knew him was bound to love him. His broad smile. His hearty laugh. The way he always made a point of looking you in the eyes.
The priest mechanically recited his dispassionate prayers, as though he’d said them one too many times. Pablo’s mother and sister sobbed uncontrollably, each making futile attempts to console the other. His niece and nephew looked up at them with wide-eyed, helpless concern.
Pablo dreaded the condolences that would follow, his anxiety mounting with each word that brought the priest nearer to the end. Under ordinary circumstances, it would have been bad enough. This was infinitely worse.
Yet again his thoughts returned to the night of the fire, to the moment he first knew. His mother sobbing in his arms, he had wanted to say something.
When he went to, nothing.
Startled, he reassured himself. He was simply at a loss for words.
Except he had plenty of words to say.
Didn’t he?
His mother turned and asked him a question—he couldn’t remember now what it was. What he couldn’t forget was what happened next.
Nothing.
His father. The store. Now his voice.
He couldn’t believe any of it was happening.