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HAWKIN'S PREBYSTERIAN CHURCH has now held Leanne Choi's wedding and funeral. The priest—an older, white man who leers at his parishioners and attacks almost any and all progressive actions Hawkins so scarcely takes—has been in both. So, unfortunately, the thing that took most of attention during the weeding, has come to haunt Lucy Choi once again.
His big, shiny, bald head.
It is unfortunate because Mom is dead and in her casket and this will be the last time Lucy will ever see her. She should be up there, touching her face, memorizing every wrinkle her mother's skin formed on her nice face. Instead, Lucy Choi is transfixed on the fact that the priest's head so clearly reflects the light of the stained glass on the opposite walls.
Lucy listens still, of course. She hears the words the priest says. A syllable-stringed monologue of who her mother was, a melancholic twist of the same words used to describe her during her wedding. She hums to the hymns the choir sings, playing with the lonely string poking through her black, lace cardigan. Her hand latches onto her grandma's hand after hearing her painful cries. Lucy can't imagine what it is like to lose a child. She can't exactly imagine what it is like to lose a mother, either. An out-of-body experience, is the best way to put it. Lucy Choi fees like she's floating and she's not sure when or how she will get off.
(I don't think I want to get off. If it stops, that means Mom will be gone and I will never see her again. It will not be me, Lyra, Mom, and Dad anymore. It will be me, Lyra, and Dad. That is not natural. That is not normal. That cannot be real. That cannot be what my life will become. That will be the end and I will not cope and I never, ever want to stop floating).
Her eyes flutter over to her Mom. The woman with the makeup did a good job. She looks like she's sleeping. Except for the fact that she's dead, which sort of takes away from the whole thing. Still, once she ignores that, her Mom looks like Mom. It looks like alive Mom, just in all black and arms crossed on top of her chest. Her sleek, black hair has been parted in two braids and Lucy wants to go up there and untangle them. Mom hated her hair in braids.
Lucy wonders when this goes away. This funny feeling of extreme sadness. She wonders where it will go. Her brain? Her heart? She feels empty already. She's not sure it will find a proper place in her body. Perhaps, it will just cycle through her. Swim with her red blood cells and flow from her veins to her heart and back to the arteries and to her body. A constant loop of sadness within her. Will this be what life becomes? Will she become Lucy Choi—sad and motherless?
She doesn't really like that.
Her eyes fall back onto the priest's bald head and then back to her mom. Some things can't be reversed. (Death and hair loss). Lucy Choi will have to live with it as she floats, floats, and floats.
