Diane Young [Camp NaNoWriMo July 2014]

Diane Young [2]

2

In the peak of Ellie's depression, she asked her mom to make sure I read the last eulogy in her funeral. Her mom, a kind lady with the biggest heart I have ever met, broke down into tears at her daughter's insistence. Personally, I was quite honoured because I had only known Ellie for approximately three months yet she had already deemed me important enough to deliver an eulogy. I cried though, considering an almost fourteen year old girl thinking so readily about her own death is extremely sad.

Later, in private, she made me promise that I write 'a eulogy to end all eulogies'. I pinky promised I'd do it.

And now, four years later, here I am standing in front of a crowd of teary eyed people, waiting to deliver a eulogy about my dead best friend.

I clear my throat and start talking into the small microphone placed on the little podium in front of me.

"What can I say about Elizabeth Winters?" I started, my voice surprisingly strong, optimistic and clear despite all the tears I've been holding back since the moment I found out she jumped. It has somehow become drilled in my brain that crying only leads to more problems, problems that I couldn't possibly deal with at this moment in time.

With a short intake of breath, I continued.

"To me, and to many others, she was Ellie. She was a picture of intelligence, a mind full of ideas and fun. Ellie was different, and though she didn't strive to be different, she made it work."

I hold on tightly to the makeshift note cards I made, until the edges crumple. When I look up again, the first thing I notice is a boy wearing a top hat staring at me from the back of the church. He has his hand under his chin and one of his legs put over the other while he sits wearing black like the rest of us. I look away from him, still curious by the top hat but nevertheless, I still want to go on.

"Most of us would remember her for completely different things, and I'm not going to try and describe how Ellie was to you, for that would be insensitive and impolite. I'll try and say what she was to me, and hopefully you can relate."

"A ray of pure sunshine peeking in on a cloudy day. Sometimes dull, sometimes bright, always changing, always shifting whenever the clouds moved against her, but always there no matter the angle our world had spun us to."

Someone started to cry out loud and I bit my lip tightly, breathing in and out regularly. No use crying, I tell myself. What would that solve?

"We used to talk about infinity, the end after the end. And now she has reached her infinity, I hope she receives an abundance of happiness, similar to what she showed me within her time on Earth."

After the service, many of Ellie's relatives give me hugs or handshakes, telling me that I did a good job with my eulogy. One even said it captured the essence of Ellie and showed truth beyond the truth. I didn't know what that meant, but I was almost one hundred percent sure it was a compliment, so I thanked them.

I hovered around like a fly as people spoke to each other and mingled. It's weird, I didn't know anyone here apart from Ellie's parents. Even the kids my age went either to her high school or were her cousins, and they stared at me equally as blankly as I glanced over them.

I decided I had stood around awkwardly enough for one day and decided to leave. But before I could, I ended up walking into someone.

"Oh, I'm sorry." I apologised, looking up at them. I saw a top hat, and for once, someone taller than me even when I wore heels. He had liquid hazel eyes (like the colour of caramel), and they stared down at me with a humoured expression, though I didn't know why, considering our surroundings and current situation.