A cacophony of bouquets stretched around the foyer, burdening the air with a perfume nearly as oppressive as the silence that choked the crowd. They waited. He shuffled. His black—the one appropriate aspect of his wardrobe—t-shirt swallowed the teen, while his jeans draped around his knees, constrained only by three silver chains. He glanced to the coffin on his right, reaching to support himself on the nearest corner. He wanted to do this. He had to do this.
“Mom…” the quiet croak trailed off. He cleared his throat, and began his tribute again. “She loved people—kids, especially. She said she was never sorry she had me, even after dad left. She had always been so happy—so free and vibrant. Her kids in the 6th and 7th (down at the middle school) just loved her. She made science so interesting for them.”
He hesitated before plunging, unrestrained, into the past. “Sometimes, though, she got frustrated. She always hated it she wasn’t able to answer a serious question for a student; she really wanted the child to be able know, and to be satisfied. I guess she didn’t know either.
“Once I was helping her sort through the grading at the kitchen table. She was depressed again that night; she was that way a lot over the last two years. Mom had always been so upbeat--almost never negative. Except for those times…they should have scared me more. I should have seen…
He trailed off, chin tucked and shoulders hunched, wracked with silent sobs. Remembering his mission, he mustered his composure and continued.
“One night, she picked up a test from a 6th grader and asked me to listen to the essay answer he had written:
‘Evolution is why we are here. It’s seems like a pretty big chance that Chance took, but here we are. A whole lot of molecules made of—well, I’m not sure what—all put together. We humans are really neat, but basically the same thing as rocks or animals. We’re all made of the same things. I guess that’s why my mom says that abortions are okay, because it’s just tissue. I guess I’m just tissue, too, if we’re the same thing. I just hope she wants to keep me.’
“She was devastated. I wasn’t sure what to say—I knew what she taught the kids. So did she; but she also taught them to take care of themselves and others, to be kind, to promote peace, to fight hunger. Mom was the ultimate humanitarian—she couldn’t stand to see wrong. The other teachers teased her about being “cop Destiny.” I remember, shortly after that, coming in during the evening news. She looked up and hit the power button on the remote, and just sat staring at the TV. She wanted to know why there was so much violence. I couldn’t answer; but she wasn’t really asking me. She just kept rambling on about how we were only here by chance, how we were only atoms and molecules, how science was the only thing she could trust, how…and then she just stopped and looked at me. For the first time, she really looked at me, and she said, “I guess, Nick, I guess that’s how it has to be. All this stuff on TV is just, well, the natural outcome—not bad, not good…just the will of the universe. I don’t have a choice. No one does.”
“I remember wondering about her beloved science. She always loved to measure things, to look at them through the microscope. I wanted to ask her how many atoms were in thoughts and abstract reasoning, like in the plane Geometry I love so much. She would have thought I was being impertinent, so I didn’t. But I wondered. I wanted to ask her why she scolded the kids for being bad at home (though there weren’t rules there--it was just bad) when she said rules were entirely invented by authorities. She didn’t like the TV reports about foreign cannibalism and other similar atrocities, but she always told me that other people could follow the customs and rules in their environment.
“Mom wanted me to go to Sunday school. She tried; she really did. She wanted me to be “nice.” I tried—sorta. I knew if I complained about the stories of those weird supernatural things they’re always claiming Jesus did, she would let me out. Mom always told me that miracles and fairytales were nice, and creative, but absolutely, unequivocally, inconceivable. After I turned fifteen, I asked her why she didn’t believe in them. She asked me what I had learned about the universe in school—what it was made of. I told her, ‘Basically, matter.’
“‘Right,’ she nodded. ‘So, if something is supernatural, it’s outside of what is made of atoms and molecules, and what science can measure. There is nothing outside of that—you can’t find it. You can’t feel it-touch it-see it. That’s why, honey.’
“At that moment, I knew why Mom always said there was no real “God,” even though she said church was nice and could help people. He didn’t fit inside our—well, our universe. He couldn’t be part of it, if her were all they say He is. Obviously, since there is nothing outside it, he couldn’t be there, unless of course, he were nothing. So there he is. Nothing.
“I know why. I know why mom is caged up in that coffin—yea, I know the mortician said a gunshot wound. But that’s not why. She died of a broken heart. She burst. She had questions, she had her answers. Her answers weren’t good enough.
“She told me once that if we didn’t have a choice, it was meaningless. We can’t make a difference—human have no purpose, because they cannot make a choice to change a determined world. They are really no different than the world by which they are determined. Just matter. Why would she waste her time trying to make a difference in little lives that would never be able to make a difference? Just matter.
“So she quit. That’s all. Just quit. She was destined to go. The atoms just changed format. So here we are. Here I am. I might as well go too…if she was right. I hope she wasn’t. She couldn’t have been.”
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