Twelve Chairs: A Covid Funeral

The room is a white box.

Bland. Impersonal.

The pale walls are bare.

No banners, no pictures, adorn the walls.

I can see the outline where they used to hang but now...

Removed.

The space is easier to clean without ornamentation.

The room is sparse.

Spartan.

Yet huge.

Ordinarily, fifty... sixty warm bodies could occupy the pews.

But the pews are gone.

Spaced out across the parquet floor are twelve cheap, black plastic chairs.

Three rows of four chairs.

Twelve mourners.

Twelve.

Your life summed in a dozen seats.

It should have been more. Thousands more.

You deserved that.

You were entitled to majesty. Glorious awe.

Instead...

Twelve.

Regulations must be followed.

The illness that took you now dictates how many can say 'goodbye.'

Twelve.

A thick ribbon of white tape marks a square around each square.

A border.

We sit. Isolated.

Each of us an impregnable two-meter wide island.

It feels...

None of this feels real.

It's too... staged.

I'm trapped on the theatre set of a symbolic play I won't understand.

I feel like an actor.

A mannequin.

Unreal.

Look at us...

Sitting there. Masks covering our faces.

Mouths. I can't see the mouths.

I don't know why but...

I want to see lips. I want to be able to see us mouthing words of comfort.

I can't.

Bloodshot eyes, and windswept hair, atop of our mourning black.

We're barely human.

It's all too... distant.

We can't even...

Unable to even touch hands.

You'd hate that. No contact.

Our bodies are awkward.

How do we do this?

I don't know what to do.

I shuffle. My hands and feet feel separate from me.

None of this feels real.

Nothing is how it should be.

Nothing.

The chairs. The masks. The smell...

Disinfectant. Anti-bacterial gel.

No - this is wrong.

You wouldn't like this. Cleaning products.

This is all... sterile.

It's sanitized. Inhuman. A laboratory.

We should be able to inhale the beach. That was you - the sea.

Untamed. Powerful. Free.

Not this...

Not bleach. This is unfair.

It's wrong.

None of this is you. None of it.

This isn't the way.

No... I should...

I should be outside. It strikes me - another punch in the gut:

I shouldn't be here.

I am an interloper.

Only twelve... I...

I shouldn't be occupying one of these islands.

These should be reserved for the special ones.

Not me.

I don't warrant a place here.

I should be outside. With the non-twelve.

None of this is right.

Is fair.

A middle-aged life summed up with twelve cheap, plastic chairs, and the acrid tang of cleaning products.

And me. An emotional refugee. Lurking among eleven you knew longer.

People I don't know.

Whose faces I can't even see.

A dozen of us.

That's all.

Masked. Sterile. Isolated.

This represents you. Your life.

This is how we now say 'goodbye.'

With twelve chairs.

Just twelve.

Twelve.

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