Mine did not.
Mine felt like a building collapsing on top of me.
Before I had even begun to understand that my sister was dead, someone asked a question that mattered just as much.
“What happens to the children?”
FIVE CHILDREN
I barely remember Mara and David’s funeral.
But I remember what happened afterward.
Adults gathered in small groups discussing the children as if they were pieces of furniture that needed to be distributed.
One could go here.
Two could stay there.
Maybe the youngest could live with someone else.
Everyone discussed how to divide five siblings.
Almost nobody asked how to keep them together.
Noah sat in the front pew holding his little sister’s hand.
He was eight years old.
He never cried.
Not once.
He simply stared toward the church doors as though his parents might walk back inside at any moment.
David’s parents arrived dressed in expensive black clothing.
People whispered about how successful they were.
How much money they had.
How generous they had always been.
I kept waiting for them to say the obvious.
“We’ll take the children.”
They never did.
After the service, I overheard them near the reception hall.
