Friday! It is finally here. Honestly I have had some really great success with this week’s prompts. Maybe it is the sinus meds? Who knows. i am off them now so let’s see if we can get another interesting one today. All those jumping in set your timers to fifteen minutes and let’s go.
Okay this could be interesting. It doesn’t draw my in as deeply as Wednesdays but I think I will definitely come back to this.
Friday, December 23rd: I never knew you were friends.
“I never knew you were friends,” he said. I looked over to see Dan approaching me. I stood in front of the newly placed tombstone for Ellen Marston and tried to think of an appropriate comment to give my coworker. Dan was someone I occasionally exchanged comments with about weekend plans on Friday afternoons at the communal lunch table. He wasn’t someone I could tell the truth about my presence at this grave side.
“I seemed to have missed th funeral,” I said lamely. I had in fact checked the time of the funeral and tried to time my arrival to make sure the bulk of those attending were gone. I suspected the crowd would hold several faces far more familiar than Dan’s. As problematic as Dan might be, they would be worse.
“You did but it wasn’t much of one,” he said. Just a few friends and family.
“And which are you?” I couldn’t help asking.
“I’d say friend but really she was my neighbor. There was a thick envelope that was dropped off in my mail box by mistake and I thought this would be a good time to pass it to her son as it seemed important.”
“Of course,” I said.
I turned away. “
“Oh there he is actually,” I looked over my shoulder and saw Dan looking in the opposite direction. I turned, knowing I was not going to like what I saw.
I didn’t. Standing with a robed member of the clergy was one of those I once knew well. One of those who would know why I was here. He looked at Dan and then his eyes shifted to me. The recognition was instantaneous. There was no reason to run. He saw me, recognized me. If he wanted to he could find me now. I was standing with Dan. It would be child’s play to get my name and basic information from my coworker.
I thought about cursing the impulse that made me come to this event but I know I had to come. I could not read the notice of Ellen’s death and not see for myself if it was true.
He walked over and as Dan and I waited I wondered what he was calling himself these days. He had about a dozen different names in the time I knew them. None of them his, just ones he borrowed from time to time like favorite library books.
He stopped in front of us. “George, again I am sorry for your loss,” Dan said.
“Thank you,” the man who was now George said. He shifted to look it me. “It means so much to have all of her friends here. I know she was a private person but she valued the few friend she had.”
I nodded my head and I muttered something appropriate for the occasion. I had long since memorize a list of appropriate nonsensical comments for certain occasions where no one you talked to actually wanted your opinion or was even listening to your response; funerals, weddings, christenings, baby showers, and a laundry list of work events. The comment passed without comment and soon enough I was able to make my escape.
Dan walked with me as I left, somehow believing that attendance at the same graveside made us friends r at least closer companions than casual work small talk. Dan was talking. I let him talk. The words flowed over me even as I planned my next move.
Ten til Midnight 