Mean Socs ||Darry Curtis||

Chapter 13: The Funeral

Darry's POV:
"Mommy, where's grandma?" 3 year old Ponyboy asks my mother through tears.

"She's... She's not here right now." My mom says. She doesn't know what else to say. I'm 9, so I understand more.

She's dead.

"But mommy, why isn't she here?" My mom thinks for a second, trying to figure out how to explain this without breaking his tiny heart.

"Grandma's just... On vacation. Yeah, she's going to be on vacation for a while, so we're not going to see her for a while, honey," She explains, "Now get in the car."

We're all dressed in black, heading to her funeral.

"Mom, I don't want to be here," I say when we get there, narrowly holding back tears. Ponyboy and Soda are on either side of me holding my hands.

"I know you don't, Darry, but do you want to come with me?" She asks.

"Where are we going?" I respond. Telling my brothers to stay put, she has me follow her to the coffin. It's an open casket.

"She looks so helpless," I observe. My mom nods.

"At least she's not in pain anymore. I wouldn't have wanted her to suffer," She tells me. But it's what she told me next is what really got me.

"Mom, why did she have to go?" I ask her. She shrugs.

"Well, Darry, sometimes... people get old. Nobody's meant to live forever. People go when they need to, weather they're ready to or not..."

That was 9 years ago. I've still never gotten over the fact that she's gone.

How would I ever get over my parents dying? The funeral is today. I just don't think I can do this. If it wasn't my parents, the ones who raised me, the people that I cared about most in the world, more than Elizabeth, more than Ponyboy, more than Soda even, I probably would have found a reason not to go. But I couldn't do that with them. It would just be.. wrong.

On Saturday morning, May 18, 1959, the entire Gang, Beka and Elizabeth gathered at my house at around 7:00 in the morning to drive to the funeral.

It's a dark and gloomy day, and the sky threatens rain. I got up at around 5 to get ready, and make everyone breakfast, but it was quiet, nobody said a word all morning.

We got there and saw tons of their coworkers, and friends dabbing their eyes with Kleenex. Just the thought of it made my stomach sink.

As soon as we got there, Ponyboy couldn't hold it in anymore. Almost immediately, my baby brother was sobbing. I didn't know what to do. I just stood there, with my hand in Elizabeth's, watching him cry.

If I moved a muscle I would start crying too. Soda was crying too, just not as hard. The rest of the gang just stared at them.

I decided to go over to some of their friends and thank them for coming. Elizabeth followed. We did that for about an hour, and then everyone started making their speeches. I went first, then a couple of coworkers, and the gang.

"I remember something my mom said to me a long time ago," I started off.

"She said, 'Nobody's meant to live forever. People go when they need to, weather they're ready to or not.' And for some reason that's always stuck with me. I've... I never really understood it, but I do today-" I started to tear up a little bit.

"It seems like such a simple thing, people die, but that's not just it. Sometimes... they're not ready. Like my parents. They were still really young. They weren't ready, but they needed to go. Someone, up there, in heaven or whatever needed them. So they left," I went on to talk about what amazing people they were and how we're all going to miss them. After a while I choked up, and went to sit down.