Love Sucks

Love Sucks - 35

I brushed my hands on the two seats either side me, thinking about how family members should be sat here with me cracking bad jokes to try and cheer everybody up. But it was just me in the backseat – alone.

Alas, the limo came to a slow, eventual halt outside a church. I got out of the limo, thanked the driver and wandered idly up the path that led to the church. It was large and rather haunting; the building towered over me, the massive bell on the top ringing loudly, signalling four in the afternoon. So I just stood there shivering in the wintery day, watching as more cars pulled up outside the church, and I eventually began to see faces I recognised.

“Cassie dear, it’s been so long!” I heard my Nan’s voice before I saw her. Something in my chest softened the break when I pulled my nana into an embrace. She was my father’s mother; she’d had two strokes, had been in one coma and survived a liver transplant, and she was still going strong. When I say strong, I mean strong; she was surely a thorough mother when my father was growing up.

“It’s Cathy, Nana,” I couldn’t help but chuckle at her mistake.

“Is it?” She looked dumb-founded for a moment. “My mistake, I do apologise, dear.”

“It’s fine,” I assured her. As long as my Nana was here for me, I didn’t care who turned up to the funeral. I’d have moved in with her when my mother died if it wasn’t for all this vampire stuff. And anyway, she lives all the way in Glasgow, in Scotland; that was pretty far from the southern coast… The whole of the UK away.

“Do we go in now, Betty?” My grandpa said, his voice raised due to the fact he could hardly hear anything anymore because of his old age.

My Nana turned to me. “Cassie, when do we go in and start the service?”

I didn’t bother correcting her; the woman had had two strokes and a coma, surely that’s got to have messed up something in her aged brain. Instead, I shoved the mistake aside I looked down the path to see four men begin to lift the coffin from the hearse.

“Now,” I said, my voice croaky. I linked my arm in my Nana’s and led her and my grandpa into the church, sitting them next to me in the front row, where direct family should sit. Everybody took their seats, and as the coffin was brought in on the shoulders of my mother’s only brother and my father’s three other brothers, the church fell eerily silent. As the Church’s minister climbed up onto the podium and began his talk of my mother’s life, my Nana clutched onto my hand tightly, and I didn’t have to look at her to know she was crying. It wasn’t even her daughter, and she was still crying.

“You can cry too if you want, princess,” my voice said softly.

“I can’t. I have to get up there in the minute.” I thought back.

“That doesn’t mean you can’t cry. She’s still your mother.”

I clenched my jaw, determined not to cry, determined not to break. I had to get up onto that podium in the minute and talk about her as if she were an angel.

The minister was finishing a reading from within the bible when I knew it was my turn to tune into the ceremony. I’d delved into my thoughts because my mother wasn’t a Christian; she wasn’t religious whatsoever, so the whole point of this funeral service was pointless. I also didn’t want to listen, because I’d heard it all before; the exact same reading, near enough the same life as my father.

“And now her only daughter Catherine Morse would like to say a few words.” The minister said, gesturing to me.

My heart jumped, and my stomach dropped so low I thought it was going to fall out of my butt. My Nana squeezed my hand reassuringly, nodding at me when I cast a glance over my shoulder, hoping I could slyly just sit back down and say I didn’t want to say my piece anymore. But it was too late; I was already standing at the podium, the church half full with people who knew my mother all staring up at me with watery eyes.