Courtney.

[icebluenothing]

I met Courtney once, briefly. She was wendolen's cousin, and I met her when we went to visit wendolen's grandfather when he was sick and dying. I don't believe we exchanged any words beyond "hello" and now we never will. I attended her funeral on Saturday, the 6th of October. She was twenty years old.

I'm not clear on just what killed her. I believe there were complications with her pregnancy. I know she needed a heart transplant. I know she spent months in therapy, months hooked to machines, months slowly giving up.

Oh, that's right -- I'm not supposed to talk about that part, am I?

We don't talk about it, as a culture. Certainly no one who spoke at her funeral mentioned it directly, although one person hinted around the fact.

When someone dies after a long illness, we automatically talk about how brave they were, how hard they fought for life, we speak of a "long struggle with illness." It's not acceptable to admit that, when faced with months of pain ahead and little hope of survival, some of us do give up. We give up hope and we give up faith and we give up trying to survive. And that, I was told, is what Courtney did, toward the end.

I don't see the shame in that. Once again I find myself protesting that I am not trying to speak ill of the dead. I think it's terribly sad and perfectly understandable. I just find it interesting that we don't talk about it, that's all.

Courtney's funeral was much more interesting to me, for that matter, for what was not said than for what was said. What was said was largely more empty platitudes about God, which actually made wendolen's mother leave the room halfway through in disgust. But no one spoke about Courtney's sense of defeat; while her child presumably had a father, no mention was made of him; and while we were there for her death, no mention was made of the inconvenient physical fact of that death. Unlike my Aunt Mary's funeral, the deceased was not with us.

At Aunt Mary's funeral, the coffin had been at the head of the room, and there had been a graveside service afterward. Courtney, I learned later, had been cremated, but that was the kind of trivial, temporal detail the funeral service was not concerned with. It was happy to leave us with the impression that Courtney had had a virgin birth, had died with the grace of a saint, and been assumed bodily into heaven.

The blame for all of this I lay entirely at the feet of the pastors who presided over the funeral. I have, I'll admit, an inherent mistrust of anyone whose job it is to care about people; I distrust their sincerity and their motives. The family and friends and medical professionals who attended displayed overwhelming and real grief and love.

(I was also struck by how many people were there, how many people Courtney's life seems to have touched in just twenty short years. I'm sorry I didn't know her. I couldn't help but compare it to how few were at Mary's funeral the day before, couldn't help reaching for an explanation: had Mary simply outlived most of her friends? Did Courtney's extended community simply turned out in greater numbers because of the greater perceived tragedy of the death of a beautiful young girl? Any avenue of consideration I tried seemed either too cynical or depressing, so I abandoned the question.)

After the funeral, there was a -- potluck reception? I'm not quite sure what to call it. Much food, and much conversation. I'm a little surprised at how much light and laughter there was in the room, but I suppose that the whole family really had been pulled together by this, and with that much love some laughter must come. wendolen was even called away to pose for pictures with her cousins; it was a de facto family reunion.

Two images will stay with me long after my other memories of the day have faded:

The metal figure of the Tin Woodman that had been left at the altar along with all the flowers, an appropriate offering to a girl who had loved The Wizard of Oz -- and an appropriate symbol, used, I'm told, by the community that exists among would-be heart transplant recipients.

And Courtney's infant son, Andrew, passed like a doll or a pet from relative to smiling relative at the reception, staring around uncomprehendingly at all the faces of the people gathered here for the funeral for the mother he would never know.