I fantasized about watching the event roll out like an Oscars pre-show: people dolled up in their Sunday best saying things like Marcus would have loved this, or that’s too cheerful, or do we have to go? The Dodgers game is on, but I’ve fast-forwarded straight to the boring part.
My father is holding his wife’s hand as she feigns tears and nuzzles into his shoulder, her ivory makeup smeared all over his black button-down. My best friend Johnny, visibly drunk, waltzes up to the front of the service to make a speech. He stumbles into my face, which is blown up on a sixteen by twenty-four-inch framed poster and raises his beer bottle in salute. Ursula is picking at her nails, crossing and uncrossing her legs nervously as she waits for Johnny, who she has always hated, to say something stupid. My brother is in the cemetery getting stoned.
As Johnny finishes his speech, leaving my funeral attendees even more perplexed than when they arrived, a slight wind creeps through the trees. I pluck
