Piercing the Veil

By Tamanna Amin 

The wind rustles the leaves. The sun slips  behind a passing cloud. Thomas sighs. A dog barks from behind a fence. The world spins on, as normal. 

There’s a ringing in his ears, although the walk home is dead quiet. The houses lining the street sit still, unmoved. It feels like a ghost town today. His hands tremble as he fumbles for the key,  unlocking the front door. 

'Hiya, Tom.' 

'Hi, Ma.' His bag drops with a small thud in the hallway. 

'Good day at school?' 

Thomas shrugs, pouring a glass of water. 'Same as it usually is,' he mumbles. There’s a swirling sensation in his gut—slow, gnawing. He drains the glass and tries to slink off to his room. 

'...Have you thought about going to the funeral at all yet, dear?' she asks. This freezes  Thomas, brain lagging behind as his toe crashes into the doorframe. 

He winces, swallows a lump in his throat, and nods. 

'’Course I’m going, Ma.' he says through gritted teeth, eyes definitely not prickling at the corners.

Thomas knows all the names of the emotions he’s feeling—and had been feeling for seven days now.  He knows their origins, their mechanics, why and how to get through it.  For some reason though, none of this helps. Not the  burning sensation, not the  mental numbness. He can’t  accept it. He won’t.

Greif has taught him one thing: the tense way one’s throat seems to seize and close when you feel hurt. The way the esophagus seems to inflate, painfully and sharp, telling you not to scream and cry out when things are out of your control. Some things, he realizes, you can’t reason your way out of—whether you’re fourteen or forty. 

When the news of Louise’s death came, he was caught off guard. He hadn’t cried. In fact, he’d made a poorly timed joke just moments before his mother answered the call from his old primary school. 'Ha, imagine if Louise’s kicked the bucket or something.' Then he saw his mother’s horror-stricken face—an unspoken confirmation. It hadn’t been funny at the time, and now, it felt painfully inappropriate. 

But she’d have laughed. He’s sure of it. She always laughed powerfully, strength in everything she did. The way she spoke in the classroom, her posture,  her humour, her care. There was even strength in the times she’d fall short—no apologies, just silent change and growth. A leader. An example.

Louise was close to everyone she taught. Thomas was just one of many. She was like a second mother, always trying to push him past his limits. He was a little bit older now, and although he visited her sometimes—discussing choices for high school, making plans to have a proper sit-down chat sometime—they weren’t in contact much anymore.  

She was invincible. Dying? Impossible.. His brain refuses to compute it. She’s the one who had opened his shell, the one who had made him confident. She’s the one who brought him to the opportunities he has now.  She is the most unstoppable force in his life.

Was. 

Thomas sighs. 

It takes him longer to fall asleep that night. As he tosses and turns, nightmares of her come alive to point the finger of blame at him. Dreams of better days, nerves before a big speech comforted by her presence: loud, unabashed, unapologetic.

Morning brings a dull ache in his stomach. He avoids his mother’s pitying gaze, speaks only a few short words when spoken to.  It’s the quietest he’s ever been. Louise would have teased him. 

'Come on, Mister Public Speaker, what’s wrong with you?', she’d say. 'You usually never shut up, what’s changed?' 

He can’t even entertain her voice rattling in his mind this morning. He tugs his shoes on anyway, it’s time to go. 

The funeral is packed. He knows she had a wider impact than just him, he knows that. But still, a pang of protectiveness rings through him.  As if he has more to mourn than anyone else. She coached him through speeches, nudged him to thank people on field trips, lightened the weight of his father’s absence during parent-teacher interviews.

But she wasn’t his alone. She had a family. Other students. Colleagues. He  shouldn’t be selfish. He should be stronger. He should be braver.

If he goes there, to the casket, if he sees her, it’s real. It becomes real. He moves his face away from it, and sees his old classmates and friends, her family and colleagues alike, mourning. No matter where he looks, he’s surrounded by this heavy grief. It’s humid, and heavy, hanging over their heads. The people here all wear different expressions—some stare blankly with rivulets of salt water streaming from their eyes, and some have sad smiles as they talk quietly to one another—but the grief is palpable. He can see it in the darkness under their eyes, he can hear it in the shaky breaths they take, he can feel it creeping up his own back. Threatening to touch him, too. 

Then the crowd settles. Quiet shuffling. Seats taken. He exhales. Saved by the bell. 

He shakes it off with a roll of his shoulders, blinking slowly twice and finding his seat. 

The service starts the way he thought it would. Slow words from a solemn speaker about who she was and what she did. Thomas finds himself bristling quietly, almost finding the usage of past tense funny in a bitter, denial-ridden way. Who she is, he thinks. What she does, he thinks. How can they really describe her like this? Let me out of here, he pleads silently. Anybody, just get me out of here and I promise I’ll never make a joke like that again. 

'We now open the mic to anyone who would like to speak about Louise.' 

His heart drops. 

She would’ve pushed him to speak. He can almost hear a little ghost of her whispering in his ear, 'Oi, you! Get up there—it’s me you’re talking about!'. There’s so much he wants to say. It would feel wrong to not say anything about her but, oh God, will it be real. It’ll be so real if he says something. He could choose to live in this little haze of denial and just never coming to terms with his feelings and her passing. He could choose that, that’s a nice place to stay, a comfortable place. 

Yeah, he might just—

'Step out of your comfort zone, Thomas!' 

Of course, she’d said that. Always had to have the last word. She’s damn right: this is nowhere near comfortable. 

He feels his legs twitch—an instinct, as if she’d just signed him up for another speech. But he can’t, he couldn’t. And yet, the love he holds for Miss Louise and all she did for him overrule any selfishness he has—his body moves before his mind can register, maybe the first speech since her passing. 

He walks to the podium, his pulse quickening with each step. 

Thomas sighs, but it breaks halfway. 

'Hello. My name is Thomas, and I… was one of Miss Louise’s students. Miss Louise is— was... um,' 

His voice warbles, but he feels something new. Something spiralling inside him, climbing up on every organ in him until it clasps around his heart. 

Is this grief? 

He blinks furiously. Then I don’t want it. I don’t like this one. She should be here, not him. But what’s grief, if not a sign of love thrumming under our skin even after one’s death? He loved her. He still loves her, even now. What could be worse than forgetting it ever happened? What could be worse than forgetting her, ignoring her?

'I remember the whiteboard markers she’d chuck at us if we got too annoying during packing up,' he blurts out. 

There’s a sad, surprised chuckle from the room in front of him. Then some sobs. Then he breaks. And suddenly, he’s okay with being up there. 

The connection between him and the people in this room—it’s her, it’s Louise. She can’t really be gone if everyone in this room can feel her. She can’t really be gone if she is the one thread pulling everyone in attendance to each other. Some wailing, lots of sniffling. Thomas pulls himself together with a shaky inhale. 

'It took me a little while to figure this out,' he says, 'but I think she’s still here with us. I think if she wasn’t, we wouldn’t be laughing. I wouldn’t be up here talking to you guys. I think she would want us to turn this feeling into something good.'

It doesn’t get any easier to speak. But he keeps going.  That might be the point of it all, really. To keep going, even when it hurts. To keep talking, even when you feel like you can’t. To try to keep something alive, even if anything else dies. 

If Thomas talks for long enough, an image will spring to the forefront of his mind: 

Louise, and a warm, proud smile.