friday.august.03.2001
i buried a friend today.

the first thing out of my lips when i woke this morning was a simple i love you. i knew in my heart, that moe and lightning heard it.

i was ready by eleven this morning. i wore everything kristin liked about me. i fought with myself about wearing glitter. but moe and lightning always did like my glitter, so i put on a little. just for them.
twiggy's mom picked me up at twelve. late. i wasn't very pleased with her to begin with. but when we found twiggy wasn't home and she went in a blind rage, my opinion of her dropped very much. it wasn't a day to raise your voice in anger.
we arrived at kristins first. at the time, we still thought that lanisha's funeral was todays too. but thank the creator it's tommorrow instead.
the casket was closed. that upset me greatly. but iheard she was so cut up and in pieces.. i suppose it was for the better. i cried. we cried. very hard. they taped pictures to her casket.. god her casket was beautiful. white as clouds with pint tint at the creases. the engravings were perfect. she would have loved it, no matter how morbid it seemed.
everyone came. everyone. i saw classmates in tears everywhere. some people i haven't seen since elementary school. i estimate there were at least two hundred of us. all crying. all mourning.
they had pictures of her everywhere. art work she had done in our classes were placed here and there. the registar was full of i love yous and shout outs. flowers were all over the place. you could hardly see the reverend for all the flowers. my grandfather once said that if i was going to buy him flowers, buy them while he was alive. he had no use for flowers when he was dead. but at that moment, it really didn't matter. the flowers spreaded the sweet scent of love. love.
i lasted two seconds through the eulogy. i sobbed the whole time. i couldn't help it really. i've known lightning since kindergarden. i should have know her til we were old rotting women.
but nothing is ever easy i guess.
finally the last song was sung and they carried her out. sobbing, we all crawled in our cars and headed for old st. pauls cemetary...
it was one the most amazing things i have ever seen. traffic stopped everywhere while we crawled thru this small town. cars stood still everywhere. a few had gotten out of their cars and stood with the officers blocking the intersection, with a hand over their heart. even an older man stopped his lawnmower, took off his hat, and stood with a soldiers salute. the family who lived across the cemetary knelt as we poured in, car by car, into that oldfashioned field cuddled together by trees. they laid her in the back, under the shade of oak trees. twiggy and i smiled silently to eachother when we noticed. at least, we still had a part of her to the grave.
we said a few prayers. prayers i haven't said in years. prayers i never wanted to utter ever again. i was oddly calm. more calm than at the funeral home. until i saw her mother, clutching kristin's casket like it was the last thing she had in this world, screaming.. "i can't leave her... don't make me leave her..." i lost it about then. i didn't want to leave her either.
i felt a deep and heavy guilt that we were in such a rush this morning that i didn't have the chance to clip a rose off the bushes in the front yard for her. but i promised her at her casket that i'd bring them sunday, along with some paintbrushes. she'd need them, i said to myself. she needs them more than i.
it was a long while before the crowd thinned. there was the huddle of adults. silent with their weeping. and then there was the larger huddle of my peers, old friends, and schoolmates, weeping quite loudly. i think, the reality hit us then, when we realized that there is an end. that we will not live forever. and that our friends wouldn't always be there for us. we had also realized, that all of us, had lost our innocence. and for that, and kristin... for lightning, we wept. all of us. men. women.
twiggy and i left, hand in hand. and prayed for strength for tommorrow.
one down. one to go.

i love you lightning. don't forget that.
lightning will always strike.