Bad Rubbish

Trigger Note: Contains themes of grief, death, bullying, and mental health.

Well, it’s weird I suppose; not knowing how to feel. Sadness, a welling of empathy from my chest, regrets; maybe nostalgia? I really didn’t know at the time – he was dead; I wasn’t… Was good riddance to bad rubbish too strong of an idiom to be thinking? Yes, it was – but then again it really wasn’t.

Four teenagers, a car going too fast, three bottles of something way too strong, and no seatbelts. Kyle was no longer in the land of the living; and I was struggling to feel sad, even as the pastor was breaking down into tears while giving his sermon. The pastor had known Kyle for a long time, he had been childhood friends with Kyle’s parents. That was his nephew in the shiny black box in front of him – the tears in his eyes were only natural.

I was getting distracted by the ceiling fan above the pastor’s head; whir; whir; whir; the fan was on a slow setting, even though it was a hot June day. How much longer, I thought. The suit was getting uncomfortable. I casually stretched and looked around to see if anyone I recognized was in the room. Yep; all of his friends – none that were mine. I doubly did not want to be in that room.

Thomas Kent, Candice Sota, Matt Johnson, Rick Hentworth, Ashley Trent, Victor Rodriguez. The kids that played sports and were liked because they could run fast and put on a good show on a field. They were there because their friend – best friend to a few – was dead. I was there because my parents were friends with the parents of the kid that went out of his way to always make my life hell. That’s why mom and dad were there, putting on proper appearances, and unfortunately requiring my presence. Proper appearances meant appearing proper – like the smiling family that was always on the front of our Christmas cards that we sent out; an image I never had learned to rectify with reality.

Pastor Mark was continuing his sermon. He was using the standard Ecclesiastes 3 funeral template. A time, a season, to be born, to die. You know the one. He had modified the sermon to include the lessons learned from a life tragically cut short. I had already learned at least one important one – natural selection worked.

“… a hardworking, talented young man. He was a light in every room...” He paused to choke back a sob before continuing. “We are grateful for the short years that he had –”

And grateful they were short interjected the voice in my head.

“… for the short years that he had. It is not our place to ask God why –”

We don’t need to ask why; we know why. My inner sarcasm was in full attendance. Can we just hurry up and throw him into the hole already? Irreverence for the deceased – how petty we can be.

After what felt like way too many words; it was over. Reception time: honeyed ham, potato salad, deviled eggs, ambrosia salad, fried chicken, cookies, coffee. My paper plate was piled high and I was happy (ish) right up until I happened to look up from my food and saw Candice walking towards me. There went my momentary semblance of happiness. I’d known Candice for far too long – classmates since kindergarten; our younger brothers were in the same Scout troop; if ever there was a love/hate relationship in this world it was me and Candice. I really didn’t need her talking to me about Kyle, my feelings towards the man were not secret.

Candice came over, sat down across from me, and stared at me with those big dark tear-filled eyes. I stared back at her and tried not to say the obvious. She was picked on to; she knew, well as I did, the cruelty of people that don’t know better; she didn’t have anything to say to me –

I’m sorry; it is crass to speak ill of the dead, but, maybe, if I give you a list of events from the last three months; months! You might understand my position a little better. Trust me – it is the curse of years that our past actions cannot be changed or undone; all I can do is look back and slowly realize that goodness is a hard thing to claim. So let’s go over a brief checklist; maybe at least then you can sympathize with the angry child from back then.

- Dumping water on my seat before I sat down; had to walk around the last three periods looking like I wet myself.

- Yes, one day they did in fact decide to learn if the skinniest kid in school could be successfully put into a locker.

- Passing around a picture he took of me while I was in front of the class; captioned it “For Five Cents a day you feed this starving child.”

- General nonstop mockery; I had once upon a time made the cardinal sin of not being born athletic; but rather a high functioning autistic with a special interest in all things literary. This made me a rejectable, a nerd. The prick even once called me Dalit… do you realize how out of their way an American high-school jock has to go to even learn who the Dalit are!? Our education system in this country is abysmal; he didn’t learn about them in school; he just looked up how do other countries treat their worst and then assigned that status to me. Disgusting.

Anyways; four examples from the last three months pre-mortem. Now you can understand me glaring at Candice so intently. I knew my side of things – yet I knew none of hers. I didn’t know that she’d had a crush on Kyle for years; I didn’t know that two months before he’d reciprocated those feelings; that one month before her parents had grounded her after catching him in her bed; that she had been forbidden from coming to this funeral but had snuck out anyways. I didn’t know; nor could I see the future of self-destruction that would stem from this death. Candice’s nonstop nights of insane drinking; her believing the lie that her body was the only way for her to find popularity; the abuse that would follow the next seven years of her life, both her own substance abuse and the abuse of the people she’s going to chase. There is a light at the end of the tunnel – AA leads her to being a wellness coach in the future – but maybe the tunnel could have been avoided. I couldn’t see any of it, so I should not feel guilty – but this; this. This may be one time when I do allow myself to feel guilt without justification. I should have pretended to care.

Jealousy.

I’ll just leave that word there; you can surmise from it all that you will.

Candice sat there staring at me; I sat there staring at my plate. It hurt to look at her, she was crying over a body that, at that moment, I could’ve spit on; I could feel my chest tightening; even then I knew that level of rage, towards the dead no less, was wrong; but I couldn’t admit it. Like the storied Raskolnikov of long ago I considered myself one with the spirit of Napoleon; of Alexander – though my conflict be different than his – I thought that admitting wrongness in despising the dead would crumble the delusion of grandeur that I’d built for myself – great men don’t mourn insects. In truth though; had there ever been a man weaker and more disgusting than me – unable to forgive a dead sixteen-year-old idiot?

Candice wanted comfort, someone to talk to and exchange small talk within that instance – she’d known me long enough that she thought maybe, just maybe, I could be that small talk. I decided to try. “Hey,” all I could really get out.

“Hey,” she said back; her usually loud voice now nearly a whisper.

“It’s, well, it’s rough, yeah?” Such intelligent, well-worded thoughts. It’s rough. Yeah, sorry Candice, your secret boytoy who you’ve had a crush on for as long as I’ve had a crush on you is dead. So rough. Ironic, I didn’t even know at the time about them being secretly together, I was just being a prick in my head – and trying desperately not to voice it aloud.

“Yeah…” She trailed off and looked away. She knew that it had been a mistake to try and talk to me – in my defense however I had still tried. We just sat there; awkwardly eating, until I heard another set of footsteps approaching behind me.

“The hell are you doing here Carson?” Calling me by my last name – that voice – it was Rick.

I turned around slowly and looked at him. 5’ 8”, decently built, dressed like everyone else that was all in black. He knew he should have been in that car; he had been at the same party as all the others, problem was when Kyle and the other three left they had made Rick stay behind because he was already hammered and puking. Out of the four that had been in the car Kyle was the only one dead, but for some reason Rick had decided to develop the start of survivor’s guilt; even though most people in the car had survived; again – he hadn’t even been in the car; the guilt made no sense to me.

“What am I doing here?” I repeated his question slowly. I gestured at my plate. “Eating.” With those that play sports I find talking to them slowly and simply to be the best; their reptile brains can’t comprehend basics such as logic.

“Really? I couldn’t tell.” Rick’s face showed a lot of things at my choice to be sarcastic – lots of weird twitches, flashes of the pupils, the corner of his mouth seeming to glitch out. Then; blankness. My sarcasm annoyed him. “Well, you’re here – anything to say for the deceased?” He does it on purpose. He knows – Rick is just getting one more insult off for Kyle. He wants to hear the one person with a right to hate Kyle say something nice. I felt like it was purposeful cruelty.

Cruelty for cruelty then.

“Good riddance to bad rubbish.” The words are out; I cannot unsay them, the cannon has been fired, the musket shot rings out from Lexington and Concord. I cannot take it back. I see the horror and pain on Candice’s face, she had hoped to confide in me, now she knows that I feel nothing for her pain. I see Rick’s face sneer as he winds back his fist; he had genuinely hoped I would have something decent to say; no one’s ever punched me before; I’m on the floor, looking up at the ceiling, dazed.

Parents are yelling, the drama is already over.I’m mad – I know I’ll somehow be blamed for this – and the reception ends with me knowing nothing else about events – because I spent the rest of it outside; away from everyone; still blaming the man in the box.

And it’s strange – I spent years maintaining all those feelings. Until one day I realized something; I was holding a grudge against a kid who never got to grow up or experience hindsight. I was still angry at a sixteen-year-old who was going through his own stuff that I never knew about. I was angry at someone who never had the opportunity to change; it was when I realized that that the hate finally flowed away. Good riddance to bad rubbish.