A Prologue For A Book That Will Likely Remain Unwritten by Teal Pratt

Of course, it all starts with a funeral.

An end that brings a new beginning, a closing door with blood-rusted hinges that

somehow opens another entrance. Because that’s how stories start, right?

The story starts with a cliche loss, my mom’s corpse in the casket. But I couldn’t know if she was really in there - a Schrodinger’s cat within a closed box. It didn’t feel like she was there. I didn’t really know if I was actually there, either. Every limb that somehow belonged to me felt distant. The ground felt too far beneath my feet, almost as if I were riding on my father’s shoulders again. The casket was not quite in front of me and not quite conceivable, the distance not feeling quite right. It was real, I knew it was, but it didn’t feel quite right. A soul travelling through images, senses that are real but not processed quite right. Feelings, feelings, feelings, not-quite-right, not-quite-right, not-quite-right.

I was stuck in a timeline that made no sense. If I was in the correct timeline, Mom

and I would be at home on the couch watching Supernatural. Lucy would be off with her boyfriend, preparing to pack up her life for college at Cornell. Maybe we’d still live near Schenectady with Dad, maybe he and Mom would still be in love - but probably not. Probably, Mom, Lucy and I would still be living paycheck to paycheck, but at the very least, Mom would still be in the story. She would be here to help me get ready for prom, to watch me walk across the graduation stage, to help me move into my college dorm, to watch me walk down the aisle at my wedding, to help me and my wife plan a baby shower. But she wouldn’t even be here to drop me off at my first day of high school.

“This isn’t funny anymore,” I whispered nonsense to the cross above the casket, as if my words were sent up directly to God Himself. I wouldn’t have thought He’d find this funny, but maybe He did. Maybe, He didn’t understand the pain of us mortals, if I could even consider myself to be one. I didn’t feel it, didn’t understand why I was placed on this Earth to experience such pain. But maybe I was some external entertainment, or some poem to be written, or a cautionary tale for a testament that would not be written until long after I was dead. A hand rested itself upon my shoulder, a breath from behind that felt similar to my mother’s, but not quite the same. Or maybe I just felt her in everything.

“Noah,” My grandmother spoke, and I turned toward her. “What’s going on up there?” She then pressed her pointer finger to my forehead.

The smile-lines around her mouth sunk lower than they had last time I had seen her,

years ago, but she kept smiling despite the depth of life or lack thereof. I couldn’t have began to imagine the strength it must’ve taken to smile in front of her daughter’s cold body.

“I’m okay,” I mumbled out. “I’ll be okay,” I directed to the dark oak that was soon to be resting in the ground. Maybe she’d hear me through the oil finish, maybe the sound of my voice would force her to wake up in spite of the organs missing to science. She still had unfinished business: two kids, a job, bottles of wine she hadn’t drank, maybe an ending more satisfying, maybe an end that doesn’t create a new, cliche, pointless beginning.

“I hate to cut your time with her short, Noah, but the service is about to start. Let’s go sit down, huh?”

I nodded, and walked beside her to the front row of church pews.

What I wanted to say to her instead of just a simple ‘okay’ was that this pain is just pain. It is not formative, it does not make us better people later down the line. Sometimes it is so unbearable that you don’t feel like a person at all—

Which is an awful place to start a story, in all honesty; a character that doesn’t

understand himself because he is so wrapped up in grief that he is completely lost. Undefinable traits, pain unable to be understood in words, a body that doesn’t even feel connected to the ground beneath his feet.

Sweaty palms, probably, throbbing heart rate, racing heart ache. But if every other author found potential in such a depressing beginning, then perhaps there is something deep within my grief that could look like the sketches of a road map.