-Justin-

When Mom called to tell me that Dad was getting worse, the last thing I thought was that he was going to die. I guess that some optimistic part of me was trying to convince me that Dad was going to get better like last time. Since I'm now standing at his fresh grave, I guess I was wrong.

I toss away the cigarette and look down at the black stone where elegant golden letters say:

Edward H. Taylor.
Beloved husband and devoted father.

It says so little of what Dad had been in his life. He always did the right thing for everyone. He was the one that taught me how to tell wrong from right. He was the first one I ever told that I liked boys. I still remember the first time I called him Daddy and he started crying. I asked him if he was offended and he told me, laughing, that sometimes grown ups were silly and cried when they were happy. Now, all I'd like is to get home and find him in the room at the end of the hallway, ready to ask me how my day had been and to make me laugh if something had gone wrong. As I stare at the cold stone in front of me, for the first time in two days I become really aware of the fact that the only man I ever called Dad, is gone forever. Now there won't be anyone to look out for me. I feel alone for the first time in my life.

-Brian-

What a fucking farce. The man that had just been buried is my father and I can't feel anything. I can't even fucking rejoice in the fact that he died long before me when he had wished all his life to see me six feet under. And Claire is crying as if the Father of the Year had just died. I wonder how in the hell we can be so fucking different and not for the first time in my life, I wonder how we can even be related. We've always been two worlds apart. She was the favorite; the child that both Mother and Father wanted while I was the "accident." When Mother asks if someone wants to speak, I'm tempted to tell everyone that Jack Kinney was the biggest asshole ever and that when I was five, I used to dream that another man was my father. I dreamt I had brothers and sisters who were better than the sibling I did have, and that there was somewhere, a woman ready to love me as if I was her own. Maybe I should have done it, but I won't make a fool out of myself today.

Today is the day when I celebrate that I have not only out lived the abusive asshole, but I'm a big fucking success and I'm gonna celebrate by fucking at least ten men.

I toss away my cigarette and look down at the engraved stone.

Jack E. Kinney
Loved husband and father.

It says so much more than what Jack had been in his life. I turn my back to the grave and head out of the graveyard.