I’ll Never Forget You (sample)
Mostly I remember Mercy’s mom—how brave she looked, I noticed, and how weird it had to be to be standing in the same room as Mercy in the casket and not even facing her. Instead, she was standing—Mercy’s mom. Standing right by the door, greeting every somber someone. That’s the part I couldn’t get into my head, at least at first, how you’d have a dead body (any body) (anybody) in the room and not just stare at it the whole time. But then I wasn’t staring, myself. She looked so nice—Mercy’s mom—and she looked so sad, but also happy while sad, like people showing up could somehow make it better. And I was part of that. And I am part of that. And Mercy doesn’t know that, or didn’t, not at the time.
“Tell me only stupid shit,” Mercy said, on our last date, but also our first date. “Make me laugh or something. Go.” So I sang for her instead, just to make it really dumb. I sang “Amazing Grace” with the music of “Gilligan’s Island”. And then when she’d stopped her snorting I did it again with a poem by Emily Dickinson. “You can do it with all of her poems,” I explained. She nodded and blinked a slant of sunlight from her eyes. “Do another one,” she said. “Tell me something I’ll think is really funny.” So I did, but it wasn’t really funny, just the kind of thing you had to be there for.
Show me the manner in which a nation cares for its dead (said the plaque by the coat rack) and I will measure with mathematical exactness the tender mercies of its people, (I wasn’t picking up a coat, I just noticed it) their respect for the laws of the land, and their loyalty to high ideals. The plaque was meant to look like illuminated writing or stained glass, and I figured it came from a place that sells stuff just to funeral homes. Like how restaurants need to get a sign on a pole that says “Please Wait to be Seated”.
“Are you hungry?” I asked her. “Girls are always hungry,” she said.
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