The Thing In the Casket

[CW: References to suicide.]

The thing in the casket looked nothing like Ryan Cole.

Rain poured off the sides of the heavy canvas canopy, turning the graveyard grass to mud. Underneath the tent, the humidity trapped the scent of formal clothes and dying flowers.

Most of the three hundred guests saw the pale, handsome face of a devoted pastor taken too soon.

But to the few who knew him well, the thing in the casket was not Ryan Cole.

***

Jason sat on the front row, squeezing the foam coffee cup too tightly. The hot liquid splashed over the sides and scalded his skin.

Are you kidding me?

Uncle Ryan would have hated this funeral playlist. It was too stuffy, too sappy. “I Can Only Imagine” drifted from the speakers as a sudden gust of wind rattled the sides of the tent. Something tugged at the corners of Jason’s mouth and he fought the ridiculous, rising urge to laugh. Uncle Ryan would have been in stitches at the thought of this track playing at his own service; he had always called it the most overrated song in church history.

Nothing about this felt right.

Uncle Ryan hated sad songs.

Jason remembered him at family reunions, dancing awkwardly but loving every minute of it. Laughing on a four-wheeler, neck and neck with Jason's, teasing him with a chance to win before leaving him in the dust. Jason could almost see the wind in his hair and the reckless joy of living on his face.

The time when he slipped a check in his hand with a “don’t tell your aunt” and a wink that dared him to. The check had paid for his college prep books and next week Jason’s first semester would start… and Uncle Ryan wouldn’t be there to celebrate it.

He had tried to thank him, but Uncle Ryan had only shrugged. “Chase your dreams, kid, be someone better than me.”

Jason had always wondered what that meant.

And what was that thing in the casket? It wasn’t his Uncle Ryan, that was for certain.

***

Arthur cringed. He couldn’t take his eyes off that gray tie. Why hadn’t someone straightened it?

It was a small thing, but he wished he could fix it.

He looked at the thing in the casket and couldn’t see his son in the lifeless face. Ryan had been so alive.

In his mind, he saw teenage Ryan in his hockey gear, gliding effortlessly across the ice. Hockey had been Ryan’s life—until that game that shattered his ankle and ended his dreams.

He had watched Ryan quietly stuffing that void with marriage and ministry. But Arthur saw the deep pain in his eyes and knew nothing could ever fill it.

Arthur looked again at the tie. If he only reached over and straightened that tie, maybe he could make up for the times he couldn’t fix his son's life.

Maybe there was one time I could have.

An unbidden memory slipped up, a memory that smelled of cedar and ink. Ryan in his office, sorting files while Arthur talked slowly of nothing and everything, trying to bridge the gap. His eye caught an envelope under the theology books, a pale pink. His eyes rested on it a second too long; Ryan hadn’t missed a beat in the conversation, but his hand automatically covered the paper.

Arthur said nothing, but he knew. A father always knows.

Funny, the things death won’t let us forget.

***

Myra sat at the very back of the tent, the humidity suffocating, curling up the loose hairs at the base of her neck like the first time Ryan had kissed her.

Dang.

She was suddenly sixteen again. Five years ago in the church parking lot, the humidity wrapped around her neck like his strong arms around her waist. Rain poured down the gutters on the other side of the overhang, drowning out everything but the intoxicating danger of his body.

He had been her first kiss.

Something twisted up in her gut as she stared at the thing in the casket—the perfect statue that was not Ryan Cole.

Her first memory of him came back. The way he breezed into the youth service with his collar turned up, the scent of aftershave clinging to his stubble. He had been filling in for the regular youth pastor—who was old and fat and wheezed when he spoke. And Myra, the good girl of the church, became his secret.

That thing in the casket could never explain why.

Idiot. How could you let him?

She gazed fiercely at the thing that wasn’t Ryan Cole. It had been years now since she'd touched him, the last time in his car on the way home from an Awana class she taught. “Myra, we’ve got to call it off. We’re sinning against God, sinning against my wife. We’re living a lie.” He had been kissing her while he said it.

Myra wound her fingers together in her lap and tried to breathe through the humidity.

She loathed him, but she loathed herself more because she had wanted it. Hot waves of shame rolled over her again. She had wanted his attention, and wasn’t that attention? Just sixteen years old! Of course she had wanted it. Five years later, and she still craved his body.

But his body wasn’t the thing in the casket.

***

That salad in the fridge, gotta throw it out. Expired yesterday.

Mrs. Cole tried to grasp at the thought. Surely it meant something…

She looked at the thing in the casket and wanted to stand up and laugh at everyone. Why were they all here? It felt so stupid, so senseless. She wanted to go out in the rain and stomp in the puddles and pull down the sides of the canvas tent on top of the crowd of five hundred.

Ryan would have laughed too.

He would have looked at the thing in the casket—that mummy—and burst out in his too-loud laugh that she used to love.

The thing in the casket! She had an absurd image of it lurching upright, dancing a jig, falling face-first into the mud… Ryan coming up behind her, hands at her waist, the way he had Sunday morning while she poured his coffee.

She pulled her eyes off that stupid mummy and glanced down at her arm, the mottled, black bruise from the impact of the steering wheel.

That was all.

She was alive, and Ryan was a mummy. How very stupid.

The tree had been on the wrong side of the road.

Was it only a week ago when she had seen the photo? The pretty, laughing girl who couldn’t have been through her teens, kissing Ryan in the sunlight, her arms clasped around his neck. She had been cleaning out the storage room and the photo fluttered to the ground from the pocket of his old jacket. And Ryan’s tanned, handsome face had smiled up at her.

Mrs. Cole had never doubted her husband, she had trusted Ryan implicitly, loved him, known him.

Or she thought she had.

She tore that photo to shreds, threw it in the trash, and felt absolutely nothing since.

Not even on Wednesday night.

Mrs. Cole closed her eyes as a breath of wind touched her. She didn’t want to remember Wednesday night. Ryan, texting on the passenger side. The whoosh of the incoming semi as it sped by, the two-lane highway, shrinking smaller and smaller. It had felt so easy, just to turn the wheel... Ryan blurred from her vision.

She had wanted to die.

But the tree had been on the wrong side of the road.

Now she was looking down at the bruise and the thing in the casket wasn’t her, the thing in the casket was Ryan—and Ryan was a mummy.

How very, very stupid.

***

The funeral director stepped up to the podium. The rain had let up, but the dark clouds swirled angrily above the tent.

"Let us pray."