I was sitting in the front row of the small plane with my daughter. She slept.
We were on our way to my brother’s funeral.
Tears streamed down my cheeks. No sobs, no sniffles, no snot. Just a steady stream of tears.
My brother had been a drag queen, aka Letha Weapons, and performed a couple of nights a week at local bars. He died in a car accident one morning in a heavy downpour.
I pictured his broken body being taken to the hospital on a stretcher underneath a clean white sheet.
I remembered seeing a movie with him during my last visit. I didn’t sit next to him. It was just the two of us, but I kept the seat between us empty. When we left, I walked slightly ahead of him.
He was large and had blue hair and no eyebrows. I was embarrassed.
I’m sorry for it now. I’ll never forget it.
At the funeral home I paused before opening the door. I expected to face something similar to the waiting room of a parole office—lots of junkies, freaks, bums.
Instead, I stood there stunned for a moment. The place was crowded. Packed. I had no idea my brother had so many nice friends.
It felt good to me. I enjoyed them; all of them.
I remembered that he had told me he had great friends, “the best in the world,” and I hadn’t believed him.
My dad, who wouldn’t even look at my brother when he was dressed “in that mess,” had placed large pictures of him in drag beside his casket. Now my dad embraced my brother fully.
The pastor was a disappointment. We all told him: No Preaching. He did it anyway. He spoke about answering the call, getting right with God, because you never know when you’re going to die, just as my gay brother hadn’t expected to die that morning on his way to work.
Afterward, my sister took me to see the crumpled heap in which my brother spent his last moments on earth. I pulled a cassette tape from the stereo. Cher. He must have been listening to this when it happened.
When I returned home, I played that tape often. I wondered which song was his favorite, which song was playing as he was spinning out of control and bouncing off of trucks that rainy morning in May.
I had grown up in a funeral home, but I’d never been to a funeral, never been the one doing the grieving.
