🔴 THEY’RE PLAYING OUR SONG AT THE FUNERAL — BUT I NEVER TOLD ANYONE
I slammed the car door, the gravel crunching way too loud in the morning quiet.
The air smells like cut grass and lilies, thick and cloying; I keep getting flashes of him, laughing, his hand hot in mine, the way his eyes crinkled at the corners. How could this be real? Just yesterday we were arguing about the stupid radio station — “Country is garbage,” he’d yelled, “Give me some goddamn metal!”
And now… this song. “Forever and Always.” Our song. The one from that cheesy rom-com we watched every Valentine’s Day, even though we both pretended to hate it. “Who put this on?” I choked out loud, hot tears streaming down my face; it’s so cold I can feel them freeze on my cheeks.
Then I saw her, his *sister,* walking towards me, her eyes red and swollen. She stopped, looked me dead in the eye and whispered, “He wanted you to know.”
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“Know what?” I choked out, my voice barely a whisper against the mournful melody drifting from the open doors of the funeral home. My eyes searched hers, desperate for an explanation, a lifeline in the swirling chaos of my grief.
She stepped closer, her hand reaching out tentatively, then settling on my arm. “He didn’t tell me everything,” she said softly, her gaze heavy with shared sorrow. “But… a few months ago. After you guys had that stupid fight about music genres – he was being extra dramatic that day, you know how he was.” A faint, sad smile touched her lips before vanishing. “He came over later, really quiet. He gave me an envelope.”
Her grip on my arm tightened slightly. “He made me promise, swore me to secrecy. Said if… if anything ever happened to him, I had to open it. And I had to make sure *this* song played at… at this. And I had to find you, and tell you it was from him.”
My breath hitched. He *knew*? He planned this? My mind reeled, trying to reconcile the vibrant, stubborn man who argued about metal bands with this quiet, foresightful act.
“What… what did it say?” I managed, my voice thick with unshed tears.
She hesitated for a moment, looking towards the building where the song was playing. “He just wrote… he wrote that even though he’d rather die than admit it, especially to his metalhead friends, that ‘Forever and Always’ was *his* favorite song too. Because it was *our* song. Yours and his. He said… he wanted the last thing you heard, here, to be something that was just for us. A stupid, cheesy, private joke only we understood.”
A fresh wave of sobs wracked me, but this time, mixed with the pain was an overwhelming surge of love and a strange, heart-wrenching comfort. Of course, he would do something like this. Hide his sentimentality behind layers of irony and inside jokes, but ensure it reached me when it mattered most.
She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a small, slightly crumpled envelope. My name was scrawled across it in his familiar, messy hand. “I was supposed to give you this too,” she whispered, pressing it into my trembling hand.
I clutched the letter, the paper warm from her pocket, a tangible connection to him in this unbearable reality. The song swelled slightly, no longer just a source of pain, but a final, tender message from the man I loved. He hadn’t just died; he had found a way to sing to me one last time, in our own ridiculous, perfect language. Taking a shaky breath, I nodded at his sister, a silent thank you, and walked towards the doors, the song guiding my way, my heart breaking but also, somehow, full.