The Funeral of Us

Marcel stood before the pyramid-shaped mausoleum, clutching his father's fedora. The hat smelled of lavender and the man who'd taught him that grief was just love with nowhere to go.

Sarah was inside.

He should have worn the hat earlier—should have worn it to the hospital, to the chemotherapy appointments, to those last terrible conversations where she'd begged him to stay and he'd chosen work instead. Now she was gone, and Marcel was what remained: a zombie moving through the days, heart still beating but something essential dead.

His hair had started falling out three weeks after the funeral. Stress, the doctor said, handing over a prescription Marcel never filled. He understood it wasn't stress—it was punishment. His body was rejecting the life he'd built, the choices he'd made. Each gray hair that fell was another reminder: time was finite, and he'd wasted theirs climbing the corporate pyramid while she'd waited downstairs.

The mausoleum door opened. Other mourners emerged, faces blurred through Marcel's tears. He recognized Sarah's sister, her mother. They'd asked him not to come.

He'd come anyway.

Inside, the air was cool and smelled of stone and flowers. Sarah's niche was on the third wall, eye level. Her photograph showed her smiling—the real smile, the one she'd given him on their wedding day, before the pyramid scheme of his ambition had crushed them both.

Marcel placed the hat on the floor. "I'm sorry," he whispered.

The silence absorbed his words. He'd expected catharsis, some dramatic moment where the weight lifted. Instead, he felt exactly what he'd felt before: empty. A zombie manque, lacking even the dignity of undeath.

He left the hat there. Let someone else wear it forward.

Outside, the sun was setting behind the pyramid, casting long shadows across the cemetery. Marcel's phone buzzed—his boss, asking about tomorrow's meeting. He watched it ring, feeling the familiar pull of the thing that had killed everything that mattered.

For the first time in twenty years, he didn't answer.

He walked away instead, toward a life he didn't know how to live anymore, toward something that might one day deserve to be called living.