To
Care for Him
ACT 3: ASH
Chapter 21: The Funeral
Delia stood in her small kitchen, coring her freshly-grown tomatoes to place them in a blender. She gathered some spices and set everything neatly on the counter, as Spencer had taught her to do … back when he was part of the family. For a week she had been building a small makeshift shrine in a hidden spot deep within Viridian Forest. Apples seemed to attract rattata, little gray rodent pokemon, while berries attracted bird pokemon. It was only after she spotted teeth marks on her tomatoes in her garden and the footprints that led back to the forest did she realize how to placate the angry pokemon that haunted the forest.
She didn't mind wearing a frail white apron, one that had belonged to her mother, as she prepared a bottle of homemade ketchup, over her black dress. She hadn't yet decided on what to tell Ash. As she prepared the condiment, she was reminded of a few weeks back when Professor Oak met her in her garden as she tended the tomatoes:
He had been checking up on her for a few months
now, making sure the electric attack had done no permanent damage.
The squirtle who had run away had pantomimed what happened: his
opponent had tried to shock him, so in order to protect himself and
Delia, he launched surf, a mighty tidal wave from the lake behind
her. However, when they were all still injured, he and his opponent
staggered around until they finally noticed the human was not getting
back up. The squirtle intended to attack the opponent for making this
happen, but paused when the creature timidly poked at the still body.
It ran off, whimpering. The squirtle then ran off as well, to find
its momma. He handed her her mail as she weeded the garden.
"Mrs. Ketchum?" he asked in a bemused tone. She looked up,
shocked that he would call her something so formal after the years
they had known each other. He continued, his smile fading, "Nobody
you know goes by that name. Why did you change it?" "I'm
no longer married to Spencer, Professor," she noted, looking back
to the tomatoes, trying to avoid his gaze. "I don't want to be
Mrs. Hale the First or something like that. I took your advice. You
told me years ago that I need to stop acting like I belong to others.
So I gave us both a new name." She smirked, although he couldn't
see it. "Don't you like it?" He cleared his throat and
paused several moments before he answered. "It's just that …"
he finally noted, but found he could not find the strength to
continue the sentence. "Well, never mind. If that makes you happy,
that's all that's important."
The funeral would be in two hours. She wondered why Professor Oak had seemed so spooked with the knowledge that Delia had changed hers and Ash's name to Ketchum. Still, she shrugged it off. Gary and Ash would arrive shortly with Professor Oak, all dressed in black.
She wondered how to tell an eight-year-old boy about death.
She hurried to the shrine she had hidden in the woods and placed a ribbon from her ponytail and a small white bowl of homemade ketchup inside the little wooden shrine, which stood no taller than her knees. She bowed her head reverently and then returned to her house, awaiting her son.
When the children arrived with Professor Oak, who wore a black suit instead of the usual red shirt, khakis and white lab coat, they were downcast and somber. One look from the Professor told her that he had been discussing what they were going to see and that it would be best to leave for Viridian for the funeral.
When they arrived in the open-air chapel located in a meadow to the west of Viridian, they found a few strangers and friends of the Oak family, as well as the scholar Delia recognized from her days with Spencer, who also happened to be there. The man, the father of the young girl named Amber, was sobbing on the arms of Spencer, who patted his back in sympathy.
Awkward, Delia could not help but think as she stepped forward to the simple pews behind the steel casket, which was closed.
She felt it especially so when she spotted Giovanni, his head bowed in humility, in the first row. The person in the casket had died in a car accident -- the gas tank had exploded somehow as it drove away from the grocery store. Delia could not believe that both Giovanni and Spencer could care about someone deeply enough to seem downcast at one's funeral.
As Professor Oak reached Spencer and, Delia later learned, his colleague Dr. Fuji, the one with the solid white goatee, she saw him ask Dr. Fuji something tenderly. Fuji nodded as he cried, and Delia could just barely make out that he told Oak that he could bear both tragedies today and not to worry about him.
As the service started, the male priest somber in voice and robes, Delia bowed her head as she held on to Ash's small frame:
Those who suffer will do so only temporarily. Regardless of the backgrounds of the people here today, we should all agree that, one way or another, suffering in life is always temporary. May we be comforted by this thought, and wish this woman a peaceful journey and destination. Ms. Oak, as she was known by some here in Viridian, is survived by her former husband, Giovanni Oak, and her son, Gary. May the police find justice if this is done by the hand of man, and may Ms. Oak find peace and solace if her departure from this world was natural and destined….