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took the lead,
and Sean approved her choices. Meredith had asked to be cremated, but
she wanted a viewing. “Make sure I look good, Marla,” she had
pleaded one day near the end. “Make sure I’m wearing that blue
dress, you know the one.” Marla nodded. “It brings out my eyes,”
Meredith said and then erupted in laughter. She had a devilish sense
of humor. That might have been the last time she laughed that hard.
    The funeral was
held in the little chapel next to the old graveyard. Oak Point
residents had been buried there for two hundred years or so. The
visitation was the most difficult day of Marla’s life, of
everyone’s life. It was so hard to look at Meredith lying in the
oak casket in her blue dress, her hair silky and shiny again somehow.
It was surreal and no one could grasp it. No one could even imagine
how this had happened to their Merrie, to them. Sean stood sentinel
by the casket during the entire visitation.
    His parents and
sister sat on one side of Sean during the funeral, and Marla and her
parents sat on the other. Sean’s mother held her son’s arm and
Marla gently put her hand on his other arm. A pianist played “Morning
Has Broken,” Meredith’s favorite hymn and one that had special
meaning to her at the end of her life. People stood and spoke about
Meredith, about what a great person she was, always smiling, always
willing to help people out. Meredith’s husband and family knew all
of that about her, but they also knew her so much more, as a wife, a
daughter, a sister. Their hurt was deeper than the ocean.
    After the
funeral, Sean drew Marla aside. “I don’t think I can go to your
parents’,” he said. “I just don’t think I can handle it.”
    “ It’s okay,”
Marla reassured him. She wanted him there but she didn’t think it
would be right to try to persuade him to go. She knew how much pain
he was in. “What about your family?” Marla asked. “Do they want
to come or are they going back to your house with you?”
    “ My sister’s
going to go, but my parents want to come back to the house with me,”
he said, staring past Marla’s shoulder and into the chapel where
people were slowly leaving. “I don’t want to be rude,” he said
softly.
    “ Everyone
understands, Sean. Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll come over
later, okay?”
    Marla rode to
her childhood home with her parents. The white Victorian was on Oak
Point’s original street, which was lined with live oaks draped with
Spanish moss, and azaleas of every color bloomed profusely every
spring. When she walked into the house, Marla was overcome with
melancholy. This was where she and Meredith had been sisters. Where
they had played hide and seek, where they had built a tree house in
the backyard, and, as they got older, where they learned how to use
make-up and helped each other get ready for dates. Where they shared
secrets as children, then as teenagers. Marla wasn’t sure she was
going to be able to handle it.
    Cynthia had
arranged for serving dishes of food and a big pot of gumbo, because
she knew Meredith would have wanted that. People mingled and ate and
drank, moved outside to the patio. It seemed almost like a party, and
Marla had a hard time with that. But she knew that this was the way.
The way people celebrated a person’s life. The way they said their
final goodbye.
    After talking
with the guests for a little while, Marla wandered upstairs. She
walked into the room she and Meredith had shared when they were
little. Later, it had become Marla’s room when Meredith demanded
her own space. Two twin beds still sat against the far wall, covered
with white chenille bedspreads. A dark mahogany table was between the
beds, as it always had been. Her mother had painted the room a light
gray color since Marla moved out. But she still could envision the
lavender walls she had chosen as a pre-teen. Marla lay down on the
bed that had been hers. She thought about Meredith and their life
together in that old