Remembering Taylor Mason (Rewritten, 2020)

Chapter Six: Samara

—-Trigger Warning , Funeral scene

When I get home from Liam's, I run upstairs. I can't shake the feeling that seeing him actually made me feel something either than numbness... almost warmth. Like in some perverse way, I found joy in the fact that he was going through what I am. It's refreshing, in a way, to know we're in this together.
I feel myself start to smile, but then quickly adjust my attitude. It seems wrong, to be thinking of Liam in this warming way when Taylor is dead.

Oh gosh, even when I don't say it out loud, I feel the weight of my words crushing me. It's as if I'm a character in the cartoons my younger brother, Zeke watches. It's like a block of concrete has just fallen from the sky, when everything was more than fine before.

Except I'm not a cartoon character. The block of concrete has already hit me, but my recovery isn't instant. I'm broken, empty. Maybe one day, I'll start to mend. Maybe one day, when the block of concrete hits me, it will hurt less than it does now; a jolting pain will fade to a dull ache—but that day is not today.

I'm not going to sit around and cry about how such a perfect life ended prematurely. It's true, Taylor's life was cut short. Nobody can deny that he still had so much to do—be, but dying doesn't give you a ticket to enteral sainthood. Imperfections are what make us human; even in death.

Don't get me wrong, Taylor was a good person. A great friend and an even better musician. But we were always on the edge of something he and I, something he could never fully commit to.
I guess I can't fairly blame him for having commitment issues. He hadn't even lived with his own parents for the first twelve years of his life. They were young, teenagers themselves when he was born. But even when he did move in with them, they were hardly around. Working day in and day out, leaving him in that gigantic house of theirs alone for weeks at a time. I had expected him to throw parties. I mean, with all that time alone, what teenager wouldn't?
The more I got to know him though, the more I realized that Taylor Mason was different; sweet, sensitive. His idea of a good time was having Liam and me over for a bonfire.

We'd do that a lot actually. Almost every weekend, and as hesitant as he had been to commit to me romantically, he was nothing if not loyal. He has listened to our problems no matter how small, and had always offered us advice, or played requests on his guitar. He always made you feel heard. Understood.
—

As I look around my room, I see the dress hanging on a hanger in my closet. Full of black lace, with a ribbon wrapped around the waist, it looks so elegant, almost vintage. The memory that comes with it, however, is all too fresh.

I had worn it only four days ago. At his... funeral.
Liam was too sick to go, but I had gone with my mother and Evie. I had needed Evie there, of course, for moral support, but I was surprised that my mother had opt to go. She and Taylor's mother, Tiffany, had never seen eye to eye. My mother did not agree with her distant parenting style, and Tiffany didn't appreciate my mother's attempts to intervene.

But that day at the funeral, my mother marched right up to Tiffany. I bit my lip as I drew a sharp breath. I was so scared she was gonna scold Tiffany. Somehow blame Taylor's death on her.

Instead, my mother simply pulled Tiffany in for a hug, as Tiffany went limp in her arms.
"It's a horrible thing to loose a child," my mother said, as Tiffany whimpered in response. "The most horrible thing in the world."

My parents had lost my oldest sister, Esther, to SIDS a year before Evangeline was born.

As tragic and sick as it is, it was the first thing my mother and Tiffany had found common ground on.