Remember the Black Death

When did your mother pass away?
When did Frank die?
I didn’t know Becky expired.
Did Sam really croak this week?

Did you see her body in the casket?
Didn’t she look great—
like a wax doll at a yard sale,
painted up to seem less dead?

I don’t go to funerals anymore.
Everybody’s strange there.
Some laugh too loud,
some cry just enough to look real,
but most hover in that awkward limbo,
their faces frozen in polite despair.

Funerals are like bad dinner parties:
cheap wine, stale sandwiches,
and everybody pretending
they loved the guest of honor.

Not sure about cremation, though.
Feels like rushing the end—
as if the fire gets to finish
what life barely started.
And besides,
I don’t smoke.

The dead keep piling up,
but I don’t feel smaller without them.
If anything, their absence
takes up more space,
like the way silence grows
louder in an empty room.

I don’t need a graveyard tour,
don’t need to see their names
etched in stone,
don’t need the folded flag
or the priest’s monotone promises.

Death isn’t something you visit.
It’s just there—
like bad weather,
like a slow song
you can’t get out of your head.

So don’t ask me
if I saw her one last time.
I’d rather remember Becky laughing,
Frank drunk and telling lies,
Sam with his stupid jokes,
and your mother
back when her hands still smelled
like fresh-baked bread.

© R Gordon Zyne