What We Say at Funerals

We say they look peaceful— as if peace were something you could see in the absence of breathing. We say they're in a better place, which may be true but doesn't help the place they left behind. We wear black because someone decided that grief has a color— as if the body could dress for something the heart will never be ready for. The eulogy is the hardest poem: you must condense a life into minutes, make a room full of crying people laugh at least once, and somehow say goodbye without your voice breaking— which is impossible, which is why the breaking is the best part. After, there is food. There is always food. The living need to eat and the eating is a kind of prayer— the body saying: I am still here. I am still hungry. I am still alive and I don't know what to do with that right now. The flowers will die. The cards will be stored. But somewhere, someone is telling a story about the person we buried— and they're laughing. And the laughing is the resurrection no scripture prepared us for.