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sentiment, if she hadn’t been so pragmatic. But before Susan Patrick had passed, she’d let it be known that the funeral wasn’t for her—it was for those she was leaving behind. She was in good hands. “The rest of you still have time to serve,” she loved to say. The last time Jake heard his mother utter those words with her magical smile and a wink, he had managed to laugh. They laughed together amidst the plethora of medical equipment that had filled his mother’s living room—beeping and pumping and hissing—straining to prolong her life.
    Yes, his mother would have appreciated the friends, family, and co-workers who came to pay their last respects. The good thing about dying slowly, if there is any redeeming quality in prolonged agony, was the opportunity it gave everyone to say goodbye. It was a morbid reality and an opportunity that perhaps only the loved ones of someone lost suddenly can truly appreciate. Real tragedy struck without warning.
    The crowd came to pay their respects, the goodbyes long since expressed. And less for a single exception, there were no surprises, no unexpected faces in the multi-colored streams of light formed by the sun forcing its way through the arching stained-glass windows.
    Six pallbearers were more than enough to lift the casket, the container far outweighing its contents. Jake didn’t see his father until he was exiting the church, one sixth of the weight of the casket resting on his left shoulder. Their eyes met, his father nodded, and for a second Jake thought he saw a tear on the cheek of the man he hadn’t seen in over six years.
    The procession followed the hearse and its police motorcycle escort through Saturday morning traffic to King James Memorial off Sixteenth Street. Jake’s mother had agreed with the selection of her final resting place, a stone’s throw from Rock Creek Park and the National Zoo. It was nice—as far as cemeteries go—and if that helped to ease the grief of those she was leaving behind, then fine. Personally, she didn’t care where they put her. Her credo was, “Love me when I’m alive, not when I’m dead.”
    Most did.
    The ashes-to-ashes, dust-to-dust ceremony at the plot of freshly dug earth was short. Hands caressed the casket in a final unfulfilling gesture of intimacy, roses placed on the white cloth that draped the middle of the coffin like an untied belt. Jake made his way to the casket, gave his mother a symbolic final kiss goodbye, and then broke down sobbing for the only person in the world he really loved.
    The post funeral gathering was held at Uncle Steve’s; Jake’s only relative who didn’t require a long-distance phone call. The familiar faces from the first several rows of pews at St. Michael’s now filled the tight, outdated kitchen with its cracked Formica countertops and worn linoleum floor. The women tried unsuccessfully to evict the men who stood around the small kitchen table inhaling chips and dip, circling like vultures waiting for a more substantial carcass. Jake’s mother’s favorite jazz CD played in the living room, loud enough to hear throughout the small first floor of the brick row house.
    Uncle Steve, fifty, bald, and feisty, passed out cold Miller Genuine Drafts to anyone who would join him in a pre-noon drink. Mrs. Nelson from two doors down moved her sixty-eight-year-old body like the former salsa dancer that she was, and transformed the dining room table from a bachelor pad pile of magazines and newspapers to a place where people could sit down and eat. Smokers were banished to the back porch by Father McKenna, who was the first to take Uncle Steve up on his offer for a late morning beer.
    The doorbell rang and Uncle Steve, bald head glistening from the heat of the kitchen, shuffled toward the front foyer, beverage in hand. A curtain hung over the oval window in the antique door, offering only a silhouette of the tardy