RIANNE FLORENCE DRAKE
WIFE, MOTHER, CHILD OF GOD
1951–2014
EMMA LAUREL DRAKE
DAUGHTER, SISTER, GONE TOO SOON
1991–2006
We cleared away the detritus and made the graves look as nice as you can make graves look, then stood there, thinking our own thoughts.
I’d known Emma was gay before she’d come out to our parents. She hadn’t told me, I’d just known. She knew I knew and that Kel knew, and it was a secret between us that I always thought helped give her strength. It wasn’t my place or anyone’s besides Emma’s to reveal something like that. I figured when she was ready, she would let everyone else know.
Our mother saw her kissing a girl in a car one cold, gray afternoon in October. They were parked at the far end of the high school’s lot. Em was fifteen; the other girl was a senior. Kel said later she thought it might’ve been her first kiss.
A nuclear explosion would’ve made a smaller dent in our mother’s life. Or so it would seem. Her daughter was gay and the world was ending. Dad said later he’d been a little surprised, but not really. I think he always suspected, too, but never said anything since it would’ve caused an uproar Mom couldn’t have shorthanded. But in the end it turned out to be an abbreviation anyway. A three-day saga punctuated by tragedy.
Like Rachel’s parents, our mother brought Emma to church. Trust in the Lord and you’ll never want for anything. I wonder now if Mom’s faith was shaken then. She’d trusted fully in the Lord and he’d delivered her a gay daughter. It wasn’t what she’d wanted.
Father Mathew counseled. He quoted scripture. He spoke in his loud voice, hammering home point after point about why homosexuality was a sin. It was a choice. One Emma could turn away from. I learned this all later from Kel, who had gone with them for emotional support but was made to wait outside Father Mathew’s office. Dad had been against the whole thing from the beginning, but as in many instances before, he’d been overruled.
Emma called me on Sunday night, two days after all this.
She was serene. She explained everything to me calmly. What she left out was the content of the sermon earlier that day. Father Mathew had taken it upon himself to fashion a fire-and-brimstone oration decrying the depravity of homosexual sin.
Our mother had made Emma sit through it.
I asked her if she was all right. She said she was. I told her I’d be home in a few days and we’d sort this all out, that she wasn’t alone. I told her not to worry. She said she wouldn’t.
After she hung up with me, she went into our parents’ bathroom and found the mostly full bottle of oxycodone from my mother’s ankle surgery the prior year and took all the pills inside. Then she’d gone and lain down in her bed and drifted away forever.
We learned later she’d been bullied at school. On top of that was our mother’s reaction, which was worse. But honestly, I think she would have made it through if it hadn’t been for that sermon, the final blow while she’d been down. Because like all of us kids, she’d been raised to believe she had a soul and that there was something beyond this life. I think her stargazing and interest in the universe hadn’t detracted from that belief; I think it had strengthened it. Added to the mystique and mystery of a higher power.
In the end Em could’ve handled the name-calling from peers. She could’ve withstood our mother’s cold silence and short, cutting remarks. I think what she stumbled on was the thought that God wouldn’t love her anymore because of who she was. And if he didn’t, who else could?
I came back to myself as Dad knelt and pressed a hand against Emma’s headstone, his head lowered. I guessed this was the one thing he wouldn’t mind forgetting.
The funeral procession arrived. We made our way across the plots to where fresh earth had been turned and hidden beneath gaudy green cloth, as if the offense were the dirt.
Mary’s coffin was brought to the grave. We gathered, and Father Mathew said the final words. Robert placed a lone white rose on the casket top, and it descended smoothly into the earth, one of the cable cranks on the lowering mechanism squeaking slightly.
Rachel looked at me from across the congregation, her eyes like our first kiss, there and gone.
When it was over, I ushered Dad and Keli away as Father Mathew started heading in our direction. I’m a romantic, but I can only take so much in one day.
At home I got Dad in and settled for the afternoon, promising to cook something better than our usual fare of sandwiches or burgers for dinner that night.