Sheet of Flame

The funeral was a quiet affair. Jeremy showed up early, but left as soon as he could. The arrangements were handled by Greg’s insurance company, as his parents couldn’t be located. There were seven people there when they buried him.

Of the seven, three were part of the funeral parlor’s staff. The undertaker, the man he had hired to dig graves and the priest. One of them was from the insurance company, looking less and less hopeful about finding any relatives in the crowd. Another two were Jeremy and his girlfriend. She seemed more upset for Jeremy losing somebody than for Greg being gone. Jeremy was silent throughout the service. Lastly, there was a homeless man in the back pew, hoping that there would be something to eat at the end.

Greg had driven off with his addict’s lifestyle all those who could have possibly been friendly with him before. He had pleaded with them for cash, rides and anything else he could possibly get from them. They’d moved on. The friends he’d made while being addicted weren’t the type of friends you invited to a funeral. They weren’t the type of friends you invited in, much less anything else. All he really had was Jeremy.

The insurance company had wanted to pick a small plaque with which to mark his grave, cheapest route; but Jeremy made them purchase a headstone. When they inquired about what should be on the stone itself, he hadn’t the foggiest. It took him four days to finally come up with something to sum up Greg’s life without resorting to a cliché. He sought something that would do justice to his friend’s memory. In the end, they engraved one stanza from a poem and a short phrase made popular by Kurt Vonnegut. It reads as follows:

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
So it goes.