Feeling: released
Listening to: Train - Blind
Reading/Watching: The Man Who Cried

I've never been able to avoid crying at funerals. The only time I managed it was when I was very young, and didn't quite understand the implications of the weird pale un-person in the casket.

My mom and her sisters asked me to sing for my grandmother's funeral, and I had a fearful image of myself falling to pieces in front of everybody, drifting off-key, unable to sustain a phrase, big wobbly tearful vibrato dribbling all over the place.

But I sort of asked God for a favor: let me get through it, please. Just let me survive until the end of the song, and then I can dissolve all I want.

The night of the viewing, I was strangely cold. I didn't understand why, but I felt like I was about five feet removed from everything and everyone in the room. It was really, really weird. I didn't question it, though, just got up to the front of the room, and summoned up my trusty Singing Bubble.

(See, when I was nine and had fearful stage fright and my evil father forced me to sing for large crowds at family reunions, I learned to create a sort of misty "bubble" around me. My bubble was thick, smoky, and soundproof, and nobody could hear me in there. By convincing myself that I was safe and alone in my bubble, I could sing confidently for just me, and eventually I learned not to be scared.)

So I closed my eyes (because I knew people would cry, people always cry; it's cruel to do it in front of a sympathetic person who needs to maintain decent breath support, but what can I say. Mourners are selfish). I heard myself breathing in. I pretended I was a machine, just a mechanism of air going through a tube, pressing it upward like a bagpipe, shaping long-memorized syllables and rolling the sound around in the front of my head, where it could sit comfortably and fill my entire brain with nothing but notes. No crying, no sniffing, just me and my notes in my bubble.

I made it through. Afterward, I sat down next to mon coeur in the pew and couldn't stop shaking. It was like the aftershock I had after my senior recital, so much tension and worry forced into a compact, distant part of my body, now radiating outward once the storm had passed.

Then, the morning of the funeral, they sprung it on me: I did so well yesterday, could I possibly sing the song again today?

I agreed, because what else can you really say? "No, I won't because I'm worried I'll suck and people are depressed enough"? And this time, I got up there at the end of the service instead of the beginning, and I forgot to close my eyes.

I had to re-set myself after every. single. breath. I focused my eyes on the top of the casket and thought "You are not in there. You are gone and far away, but you are not in there." I made my diaphragm loosen and contract as if I was staving off hiccups, slow, measured, forceful breaths to stop any muscle twitches. I pulled back on volume so my weepy-vibrato wasn't so obvious. I rolled the sound into my head again and again and again, over-focusing just so I couldn't hear anyone else. And I changed the final "Amen" to a different note because I knew I wouldn't make it up high again without cracking; I could feel my larynx tightening and freezing up.

Then I sat down and it was like my tear ducts were permanently switched to "on."

Bri used to warn me about the dangers of locking my emotions away, letting them build and knot up tighter in the back of my closet, because it almost always resulted in an explosion. She was mostly right. I couldn't really turn it off until several minutes after getting into the car to leave. But at least I made it through. That's the thing Bri never understood: survive the worst part, and there's plenty of time to unravel later. No room for regrets.

It was the longest Schubert's Ave Maria in my life. And right now, I'm hoping it will be the last.

Comments? 0 so far...
Not a Diaryland member? Sign the Guestbook.