“ She had a few demands for today.” I looked down at the note cards shaking in my hands so much that I couldn’t actually read the scribbled words anymore. I recalled the night in the hospital when we were supposed to be sleeping in our separate rooms, but the nurses looked the other way. We stayed up late laying out what our funerals would be like as if it was one big joke.
“ She wanted all of her old friends from school to be here.” I looked up to where a group of teenagers sat wiping tears away with tissues. I hadn’t seen any of them visit Caroline in recent months. “She wanted the service to be outside. A place she rarely got to visit in the last few weeks.” And then I smiled at the last request. “She also demanded that I bring Orlando Bloom as my date. I tried to contact his people, but I never heard back, so instead I brought this.” I motioned toward the lifeless prop next to me. I’d searched everywhere around town and could only find a cut-out of him dressed as an elf from Lord of The Rings. The top of the cardboard was bending forward so that his bow looked rather limp.
I cleared my throat and pressed on. “I told her that I would play “Sweet Caroline” as a joke. She forbid me under penalty of death,” I paused at the finality of that word before taking a deep breath and continuing, “but Caroline was my best friend. We were there to push each other’s buttons, so in one last attempt to annoy her…”
I bent down and hit play on the iPod lying next to the podium. Neil Diamond’s voice began to croon through the speakers as I took a step back. I had to stay up front while the song played so that I could take the iPod and candle off at the end. My eyes scanned the rows of people, taking in the crowd. They all held sad smiles and wet tissues. I didn’t recognize most of them. They must have been her relatives. So many of them shared her dark brown hair. My parents were up front with Caroline’s mom and dad.
My eyes kept scanning until I passed by her old high school friends. Then I looked toward the last row of seats that was occupied by a single person: Beck.
He sat with his hands folded between his legs. He was wearing a fitted black suit with a black tie that sat crooked around his neck. He looked like he was a boy on the cusp of manhood. His unruly brown hair wasn’t styled or anything, but it was still longish on top, curling at the ends. He filled out his suit perfectly, as if he’d owned it for years but only recently grown into it.
I couldn’t believe he was there. And yet I’d hoped he would be.
He was watching me with sad hazel eyes, and for the first minute of that song, our eyes never left each other. My gaze held immense grief, his held immense empathy. But then as the song kept playing and the crescendo hit, Beck sat up straight and lip-synced the words. His eyes closed and a smirk spread across his lips. He put his heart and soul into each syllable and then when the “bum, bum, bum” of the trumpet hit, he punched his hand into the air three times with the beat.
No one else could see him, but that didn’t stop me from starting to laugh. Leave it to Beck to put life back into perspective. Caroline wanted me to be happy; she wanted people to sing at her funeral, not cry. So I reached down and spiked the volume of the speakers until the sounds of sniffling were drowned out. The song’s happy tempo blasted on and Beck and I brought it home, singing loudly and pointing to each other when the lyrics called for it. We were separated by an audience of grief, but our singing pushed through it.
When Neil’s voice trailed off and the song ended, I stood there for a moment, gathering my resolve and tucking my grief away for now.
One moment it was silent and then in the next life carried on. Caroline’s mom welcomed everyone to her house for food and drinks, and people began standing up and chattering amongst themselves.
I picked up the cardboard cutout and my stuff, and then kept walking until I reached the last row of seats. Beck stood to greet me and I took in his handsome features. He ran his hand under his cleanly-shaven chin, taking me in from my kitten heels to my sad smile.
When our eyes locked, I exhaled a deep breath, letting it carry away everything: a pound of immense sadness, my worry that things with Beck had changed, and the nerves from speaking about Caroline while attempting to hold it together. It was the feeling you get when you fall face first into bed after a long day. That’s what being near Beck felt like.
He stepped toward me, stuffing his hands in the pant pockets of his form-fitting suit, and offered me a sad smile. People shuffled around us, making their way to their cars. But we stood there, communicating without words and letting the moment sink in. I ran my fingers through my long hair and tilted my head to the side.