I feel it again, the collision with that brick wall of “this must not be.”
His mother lets go of me, and I realize I’ve stopped crying.
It feels like our mourning is all she has left of Finn. Our grief is proof of his life.
“I don’t think I’ll ever have a friend like him again,” I tell her.
Angelina shakes her head a little. “You’ll have another friendship like that, Jack, and you should.” She pats my shoulder. “Just promise me that you’ll never forget him.”
“I couldn’t.”
And there it is again, the pained joy on her face. She turns to my parents and thanks us for coming. I am a child once more letting myself be led back to the car and driven home, sitting in the silence of the back seat.
For the first time, I wonder if I can do it tomorrow.
Carry his coffin.
Carry his body.
Place it over a hole where it—he—Finn, will stay forever.
four
I have to do it. It’s the last thing I’ll get to do for my friend ever again.
I wake to that thought and hold it close all morning.
I’m doing this for Finn, I think as I get out of bed.
I’m doing this for Finn, I think as I put on my dress socks and shiny black shoes, as I shrug on my suit coat.
I drive myself to the funeral home early, for Finn, in case there’s anything I can do to help.
I park and enter the building. I head to the room he will be in.
She’s there.
Autumn sits on a stool next to his coffin, resting her cheek on its lid like it’s his shoulder. She was talking when I walked in, but she falls silent and raises her head.
“I’m sorry,” I say. It feels like I’ve walked in on them naked together, but Autumn shrugs and rests her head back on his box.
A few moments later, she asks, “Do you want to talk to him alone?” Her voice is still hoarse and quiet.
“No. I’m here in case…”
Autumn has closed her eyes as if she has forgotten I’m here.
“Should I go?”
“Only if you want to.” Her nonchalance chills me. “We’re just being close one last time.” She presses her cheek against the gray metal, and my stomach twists.
“Autumn,” I say, but she doesn’t answer me. She’s being with him.
I watch her, worried to leave her alone but not alone. Minutes pass. I think she forgets that I’m standing by the door. She begins to whisper again, and I hear her giggle once.
“I love you too,” she tells him in his box, and I bolt from the room.
I sit on the stiff couch in the hall. An employee asks if I’m here for the Smith memorial, and I tell him I’m a pallbearer. He tells me what I already knew: I’m early, and I should keep waiting where I am.
Before people start arriving, Autumn creeps out of the room. She’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt. She looks at me as she passes, like she isn’t sure if she should say anything to me or not.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“I’m letting Sylvie have the funeral,” she says over her shoulder. “It only seems fair. My dad and I are going to the art museum instead. Finny wouldn’t want Dad at his funeral anyway. I’ll go by the graveyard later and make sure he’s settled in.”
And then she strolls out.
five
All through the memorial, the image of Autumn nuzzled against Finn’s coffin, her face against the cold metal, haunts me. I hear her absence in the stories people tell, even as I laugh and grieve with them. Finn feels so alive with all these people here. It’s Autumn who is the ghost.
Sylvie sits in the front row in between Angelina and a man who must be Finn’s father. I can only see the back of his blond head and a bit of his profile. His shoulders are tense, but they do not shake. He seems to stare ahead, unwavering, at whoever is speaking about the son he barely knew.
People talk about Finn, and they cry. They talk about Finn, and they laugh. Everyone is united in missing Finn, but I don’t understand how everyone can act like this is all so ordinary. As if Finn being dead is logical.
There aren’t as many people at the funeral as at the wake, but it’s more than I expected. Jamie Allen, Autumn’s ex, is there with a girl I’m pretty sure Autumn used to be pretty close with, though it looks like she’s pretty close with Jamie now. Finn had told me about the situation with her friends. They keep looking around and whispering. Maybe they’re looking for Autumn.
Then the funeral director gives us a signal. The guys from the team and I all stand. We’re done talking about Finn. It’s time to put him away.
Before the memorial started, the funeral director explained how we would lift the casket together, but it feels like being in a play unrehearsed. We get through it though. One guy behind me stumbles, and for a second, I wonder if Finn felt the tilt, but then I have to bite my lip to keep from crying when I remember that Finn couldn’t. It’s done. He’s on my shoulder. Finn. Inside this box is Finn, was Finn, and his head is probably near my own. As we walk him to the hearse, I hear Autumn’s voice, We’re just being close one last time.
This will be Finn’s last car ride. The doors close behind the coffin, and my parents ask me if I will be okay if they skip the graveyard service.
I tell them that it’s okay, even though none of this is okay, because their being there wouldn’t make it any easier.
I ride with Coach to the graveyard. He asks me if I want to talk. I say no.
We follow the hearse to Bellefontaine Cemetery. Past the gates, the hearse travels down a long path past the mausoleums, some the size of houses, some like sheds of stone. Finn was the only one in class to get the extra credit question on the American Literature final, What icon of the Beat Generation is buried in St. Louis’s own Bellefontaine Cemetery? He shrugged when I asked him how he remembered, and we never imagined he’d soon have something in common with Burroughs.
We pull up to a newer, more open part of the cemetery. No grand mausoleums here, simply headstones standing tall, for now.
We line up as a team again and lift him with more grace than before. This time, I try to cherish the weight of him on my shoulder. I lean my cheek where I hope is close to his.
And then on a quiet count to three, we set Finn down forever.
There is crying again but no more laughing.
In the row of chairs by the grave, the man who was supposed to be Finn’s father sits, leaning forward with his head in his hands, and does not look up even once. Sylvie, seated next to him again, sits ramrod straight, like her purpose is to be a wall between him and Angelina. Perhaps it is.
I knew the poem about an athlete dying young was coming. I hadn’t known how different it would sound as Coach read it here, by Finn’s grave.
His final resting place. His final everything.
They’re about to do it.
There’s a mechanical hum as his coffin is lowered down.
It’s not really him, yet it is him, and they’re putting him away forever. I want to beg someone to stop this, to let me keep him, please.
But it’s done. Finn, my friend, is in a hole in the earth. For the rest of my life, no matter how long I live, I will always know exactly where he is, because he’s never going to move again.
People are lining up to throw a handful of dirt in the hole before they leave him, but I can’t do this last thing for him, so I stand there and watch.
As the grave begins to slowly fill with dirt, I think of Autumn coming later, after the rest of us have gone, to be with him.
six
I watch as the line of people who have waited to talk to Angelina slowly winds down. Alexis met my eyes before she left, but we never spoke. When Coach was leaving, I told him there was something I needed to do, that I’d get a ride home from someone else. I don’t know what I’m waiting for though. I don’t need to say anything to her or Autumn’s mom, and my duties are finished. Finn is in his grave.
I take off my jacket and tie, unbutton my collar.