THE FUNERAL I HAD WHILE ALIVE

 

NOBODY CAME TO MY FUNERAL.

Not because the earth had swallowed my name, nor because the heavens had forgotten my address, but because I had spent a lifetime dying in places where everybody could see me and nobody thought to ask if I was all right.

I died in conversations where my words were met with silence. I died at tables where I served everyone but myself. I died in the arms of people who held my body but never bothered to learn the language of my heart.

And yet, I lived.

God, how desperately I lived.

I laughed with a mouth full of sorrow, wore courage like a Sunday dress, and told the world, "I am fine," because I had learnt that honesty was an inconvenience to people who only loved me when I was easy to love.

I became everyone's shelter while praying for somewhere to rest. I learnt to listen to everybody's storms while drowning in my own. And whenever my soul grew tired, I apologised for being human.

Nobody noticed the funeral.

There were no flowers, no black clothes, no hymns rising into the morning sky. Just a woman growing quieter, a smile becoming more rehearsed, and a heart learning to stop asking for what it should never have had to beg for.

I buried my needs beneath the word understanding. I buried my anger beneath the word forgiveness. I buried my loneliness beneath a thousand notifications from people who knew how to find me but never how to reach me.

Then, one day, I stopped showing up.

I stopped being the first to call. Stopped asking whether everyone had arrived home safely. Stopped carrying conversations that other people had abandoned halfway. Stopped making excuses for those who had made a home out of disappointing me.

And suddenly, my absence became a language everybody wanted translated.

"She has changed," they said.

Of course, I had.

Even the dead look different when you finally notice the grave.

But nobody came to my funeral.

Not when I needed a hand to hold. Not when my voice trembled behind a joke. Not when I was breaking and called it growing. Not when I needed somebody to sit beside me without asking me to make my sadness more comfortable for them.

They will come, perhaps, when my name becomes a memory and my silence can no longer inconvenience them.

They will bring flowers to the body that no longer needs tenderness. They will tell stories about the kindness they once took for granted. They will call me an angel now that I can no longer ask them to treat me like a human being.

And someone will cry, "I wish I had known."

But I was there.

I was there in every unanswered message, every swallowed confession, every quiet invitation to notice that was mistaken for a request for attention.

I was there.

I had a heartbeat. I had dreams. I had nights when the darkness felt heavier than the roof above me. I had a thousand things to say and a thousand reasons to remain silent.

I was there, long before the grave.

Nobody came to my funeral.

Perhaps because the world has become so accustomed to people surviving that it no longer remembers to ask what survival is costing them.

Perhaps because we have mistaken availability for strength, silence for peace, and a person who asks for nothing for a person who needs nothing.

Or perhaps we have simply become too busy to notice the people disappearing right before our eyes.

So, if you find me while I am still breathing, do not wait for a coffin to teach you tenderness.

Ask me how I am and stay long enough to hear the answer.

Sit with me when my laughter is absent. Remember me while I can still remember you. Love me in the ordinary hours, when there is no audience and no eulogy to prepare.

For I do not want to be mourned by people who never made room for my pain.

I want to be held by those who understand that even the strongest hands sometimes tremble.

I want to be remembered while I am still here to know it.

Because the cruelest funeral is not the one where nobody comes to bury your body.

It is the one you endure while you are still alive, surrounded by people who never realise that they have already lost you.