(no subject)
The tears didn't manage to come until I hung the suit over my door. The uniform I would wear to bury him. It was fitting really. I laid his wife to rest about fifteen years previous. It's the role I fill in family affairs now. To escort them in their new lives in marriage. To lay them down when they are free of their burdens.
In his elaborately carved casket he wore the same highlander garb I helped him into on the day his youngest daughter married. The day I first became aware that he was no longer a man of stone. He was beginning to waste away. Bladder Cancer. Prostate Cancer. Diabetes. All of this after 35 years of living with pig-heart valves and chronic alcoholism and smoking. He'd been declared legally dead at least twice. It never managed to silence his laugh or weaken his smile.
"You know Uncle John was honored by your presence." Their words were simple. They understand my values as so few others do. It will be my honor to lay them to rest next to their parents.
In his elaborately carved casket he wore the same highlander garb I helped him into on the day his youngest daughter married. The day I first became aware that he was no longer a man of stone. He was beginning to waste away. Bladder Cancer. Prostate Cancer. Diabetes. All of this after 35 years of living with pig-heart valves and chronic alcoholism and smoking. He'd been declared legally dead at least twice. It never managed to silence his laugh or weaken his smile.
"You know Uncle John was honored by your presence." Their words were simple. They understand my values as so few others do. It will be my honor to lay them to rest next to their parents.