Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to mourn everything worth mourning. The broken laughs, the empty hearts, the secret tears and the ones who don’t love us back. There will always be that one girl wearing green among the black dresses and the other women might stick up their noses but deep down they all know she’s the only one there who knows herself. Everyone wants to be in love on Christmas, and not the kind of love that’s special like getting dressed up to see a play downtown, but the kind of love that’s special like snow on your birthday, when your birthday’s in July.

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to mourn the unmailed letters and the lonely Decembers. The children ask, Does it ever go away? They’re asking about heartache and you know better than to lie so you answer truthfully and you say, No, it doesn’t, it doesn’t go away. One day you’re jumping in puddles and the next thing you know 30 years have passed and you’re telling your kids to walk around them. Everyone is taught to look both ways before crossing the street and to talk quietly in the library, but no one ever learns anything that matters, like how to keep breathing when your heart breaks in half.

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to remember what it’s like to be alone and to listen to the silence as the casket is lowered and the mother starts to cry and the aunts try to comfort her and the father doesn’t cry and no one tries to comfort him and the silence shatters like a thousand pieces of paper ripping in half and the day you danced in front of the three-way mirror seems like a lifetime ago as the father starts to cry and no one knows what to do.

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to mourn the loss of yet another empty soul for whom death was the only way out.