A woman in the front row caught my eye and started to cry.
Seven years ago, I was at a funeral. It was the week before I moved to Memory Lane; I think it was a Tuesday. My suit was black and clean. I didn’t have a beard back then and my hair was well kept. The people around me were clean and kept as well. Some of them wept.
They called me up front, asked me to speak to the clean-kept, well-pressed people. I stepped forward and looked out at the crowd. A lot of them looked very sad. A few of them slept. I knew some of the sad ones—I even had pictures of them hanging from the wall in my house on Memory Lane.
My eyes were crying. I didn’t think that I was, but my eyes certainly were. When I spoke, my voice wasn’t crying though. For a time, my mouth woke up and said some things before falling back to sleep. I stepped down, and returned to my seat.
There was a reception at the end of the ceremony. I left without speaking to anyone.
On my way out, I passed the weeping woman from the front row.
She didn’t see me.
I didn’t see her.
American Fables 