Murder To Excellence

20.

Please do me a favor and take a moment of silence to appreciate my husband's beautiful, panty-wetting selfie before you start reading. Amen.

Drizzling rain and a lot of clouds.

They didn’t really care at the moment since some wore hats, some had umbrellas and it wasn’t the time to worry about their hair and clothes getting wet or their shoes getting ruined by the humid mud.

It was quiet, very quiet. Everyone heard what the conductor was saying, but not everyone was listening. Some silently cried while others just stared lifelessly at the two holes in the ground. It was unthinkable how everybody had prepared themselves for the death of one person, but ended up having to prepare for two.

It was Raphael’s first funeral ever. He wasn’t there because he actually wanted to be there—no one wanted to be there—but he was there because he knew Rose needed him. Along with all her other relatives, it hit her hard. She had expected Pa to die pretty soon, yet it was still unbelievable for it to actually happen. But what she didn’t expect was for Ma to die too. She died about two hours after Pa did and the doctors weren’t even sure why. She wasn’t sick or anything, so it couldn’t have something to do with that. It was either just her age or the impact of her husband of decades dying; it was still a big mystery.

All of their relatives and close friends went to the now coffin-filled holes, dropped their lilies and optionally said their goodbyes once again.

When Rose was done she walked back towards Raphael under the umbrella. Both her tears and words were finished and he noticed. She had been feeling extremely awful lately which was self explanatory. She had cried constantly, could barely sleep or eat. It was that bad it came up to the point he had to actually feed her or she just wouldn’t eat at all.

“How do you feel? Any better?” One arm held her close against him while the other still held onto the umbrella. For him, it was a little step to closure. He hadn’t attended the funeral of the four most important people just because he personally couldn’t stand the idea of going to one. He initially wasn’t here for himself, but he eventually was a little.

“I don’t know… yes… no…” she wept against him.

He kept quiet mainly because he felt for her. He understood exactly what she was going through. She had lost her grandparents at once just the way he had lost his parents.

They held a ‘celebration’ at Ma and Pa’s house. All they did was reminisce on the times they had shared with the pair. They showed each other pictures with the two, some unseen to a few. This was the Cole family’s way of mourning; minimalistic crying and more happy thoughts.

But Rose wasn’t doing any of that. She felt guilty. Guilty, because she had promised Pa she’d marry Raphael while he was alive and it didn’t happen.

She stood alone in the hallway, staring at a picture her grandparents had of them with Rose. Rose had complained about this picture numerous times. She was about three years old in the picture, Pa and Ma stood on both sides of her and both held onto her arm firmly, while lifting her off the ground a little and swinging her back and forth.

She looked happy, they all did, and they all were. That wasn’t why she wanted her grandparents to take down this XXL picture from their wall. It was the outfit she wore. It was some awful pair of color blocking dungarees. Her parents and her grandparents had told her she looked absolutely adorable with the Pucca-like hairstyle and the horrible outfit, plus it was the way people supposedly dressed their children back in the day. Still, every time Rose saw the way she looked in the picture, she cringed.