Jeramiah 20: 14-18

    Cursed be the day I was born!

    May the day my mother bore me not be blessed!

15 

Cursed be the man who brought my father the news,

    who made him very glad, saying,

    “A child is born to you—a son!”

16 

May that man be like the towns

    the Lord overthrew without pity.

May he hear wailing in the morning,

    a battle cry at noon.

17 

For he did not kill me in the womb,

    with my mother as my grave,

    her womb enlarged forever.

18 

Why did I ever come out of the womb

    to see trouble and sorrow

    and to end my days in shame?

The pews in the funeral home are bare. A few people sit in the front of the room, hunched over with their hands wrapped around their phones and their eyes locked into the screens, in hopes that the viewing would be over as fast as possible. 

His mother standing in the corner of the room, sobbed hard, as forced tears ran down her face. Speaking of her own sorrows and showing no love for the boy in the casket. She doesn’t care about him. She never did, and as hard as she tried to hide it, it showed through in the words she spoke. She would never see her son again, and she wasn’t terribly upset about that.

His father stood in a doorway just across the lines of pews, facing away from his ex-wife, the woman he never loved to begin with. He was talking to a person wearing a uniform shirt for the funeral home. The cheapest funeral home his father could find. He would not spend anymore money than he had to on a dead body and most definitely never on the son he never really knew. If you looked hard enough, dollar sign silhouettes floated in his pupils. He argued with the person from the funeral home about the prices of the cheap fake flowers surrounding the casket, hoping his complaints would lower the amount he would have to spend on them after the boy was laid to rest, six feet under the ground, and out of their hair forever. 

The preacher, a man in black, walks to the podium in the front of the home. He does not look among the crowd. He does not care for the people he speaks to. He does not care about the dead boy in the casket behind him. He wants only but to preach his scripted sermon he speaks at each funeral he is hired for and to leave with a full wallet. He has a special script for people like the ones he stands before now and for the body lying to rest behind him. One he wrote for special funerals and blasphemous individuals. 

“Friends and family, we are gathered here today to mourn the death of a boy. A boy who crumbled under the weight of the darkness in this world, and instead of praying for the help of God, took his life. A boy who left in sin. I Corinthians 3:16-17 says “Know ye not that ye are the temple of god, and [that] the spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which [temple] ye are.” His gaze casted on the zombies in the pews before him and continued his wretched speech, hand written in anger.

“God never intended on the world being so full of hate and sorrow. In times of need, he lays his hands upon our shoulders in hopes of you feeling his healing squeeze. Some of our souls just aren’t meant for healing. Healing. Some of us do not know how to heal. Perhaps it is just easier to just depart from the world, and continue on in our spiritual form. This, however, is not how God intended. 

At least the one thing we have to be thankful for is that this sinner had enough of the holy light left within himself to follow the example of Judas and kill himself. It is a good thing what this boy did. Another sinner among sinners who shall never see the light of day again. Hell is cushioned lightly for people who betray the lord, and who are unable to ask for forgiveness for their sins. His world was riddled with sin and pain. He lived a tainted life, one in which was corrupt and unable to see purity ever again. Sin. Sin. Pain. Sin. Better off dead.” 

The angry preacher walks away from the front of the funeral home and to the back of the room. His speech is short, but his point is made, and that is all that matters. No one seated says a word. They all know that the preacher is correct and that the boy is better off dead and gone. His life was miserable. Even in death. His face frowned from within the cheaply made wooden casket, as sad as he was in life, it must have followed him in death. Perhaps even sad people need a change of scenery. 

There are no men lined up to carry his body down the stairs leading to the hearse. A few people the boy never met offer to help carry him out of pity. His body rolls in the light amount of padding cushioning the inside walls surrounding him. The thudding echoes in the silence as he is loaded into the back of the black car. The line of cars behind him going to see him lay in his final resting stop is short. 

As they lower the body into the ground, there are no roses thrown upon his casket. The people do not care to send him away happily. 

They do not care. 

It is clear they never cared.

They will not visit this spot again. 

And I am not surprised. I am not surprised this turned out the way it did. I am not surprised about how much worse writing this made me feel and how numb I am to the world around me. I was assigned to write about how much my death would impact people. I was told that they would be upset and my brain could train itself to think they cared. They do not care. I am worse and I am tired. I am tired and I am worn down to the bone. I think this is a good enough farewell. I won’t be responding to any sort of comments. People on the internet don’t care.

I am tired of writing. And breathing. Thank you for reading my story, but I can’t go on any longer. 

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You are not alone. There are people who care. The author of this story cares. 

Suicide Hotline: 1-800-273-8255