A Sibling in Always

Part 1 Chapter 4

4

What am I to make of you?

The one to whom I will speak

The nature of your design

I am beside of myself

I ask, do you have a name?

Tell me how you want to look

This chance is perfect for me.

It is perfect for you too.

We must have a way to go.

How shall we proceed, my friend?

What will I turn you into?

Someone is hiding in there.

I want to know your true name.

These years you waited to die.

Could there have been anything,

Only madness in the dark.

Darkness is in this light too,

And there are things you may lose.

Did you ever hold something?
You have ever felt possessed,

Since those who are never do.

(Madness is on this side too.)

I keep saying it is not routine. Dying that is. But neither is living in most cases. People have such a thing as an average life. There is a median income for American families. People have two kids on average. They buy cars and go to movies. They get their teeth pulled when they get old and they buy their grandkids Christmas presents. I know all this. I have seen the family pictures adorning the funeral home. Plucked from mantels and tables from around homes and placed around the coffin in the viewing room. Smiling faces. Cooked turkeys and full bellies. Happy people. I have never had that life, but I know it to be real. I see it time and time again throughout the years. A couple funerals a week: that is what we average. More than enough to keep the home afloat.

My uncle doesn't live at the funeral home like I do -- me in an efficiency apartment in the back of the home. Now our new employee is living in the apartment above the garage. I don't know if he is paying rent or if it was just something he and Seth agreed to, that way Seth could pay him less money. I have no idea. I don't get into the business. I know my skill and I do it well. I like the challenge of it sometimes. But as violent and dismembering as it is, I am rarely shocked at what I see. I know that people die in violent ways, and that is where I make my mark. It eases people to see the violence removed.

But no violence tonight. None.

Sometimes I like to think my uncle and I have come to a place of forced mutual respect. We have never operated on a familial level. It is a façade and it took until I was at least thirty to develop, but it is in place now. It is necessary for us to work together as we do. One of the points is we respect each other's privacy. I never invite him into my home. He does not invite me to his, though I have seen if from the outside; a few miles from the funeral home. Not flashy, but elaborate. He makes the money in the place. He has been married for years, but I have only met his wife a few times. She doesn't consider me family.

Nonetheless, we respect our mutual privacy. That is our way now. I began living in my apartment when I was young, almost immediately after my mother was committed (we stayed in the apartment above the garage when we lived together). In my twenties it was nothing for Seth to barge in unannounced and uninvited as if he owned the place. In actuality he did own the place, but it was mine in my head. We fought and argued. I threatened to quit the business dozens of times. Now I have my privacy, but tonight my uncle broke it.