"Perhaps they are not stars, but rather openings in heaven where the love of our lost ones pours through and shines down upon us to let us know they are happy." - Eskimo Proverb
Brooke liked to consider herself well-versed when it came to funerals; it was a cryptic and insensitive thing to think, but although she'd attended countless funerals throughout her life, there were very few that actually made her feel anything; the funeral for Anna Sawyer, when Brooke had been eight, was the first time the concept of death had actually meant anything to her. Before then, she'd never cared enough to really understand what it meant to die: that your heart stopped beating and they put you in a wooden box and lowered you into the ground, and your life was over, forever. At that particular funeral, she'd sat in the front row of the church, Peyton sandwiched between her and her dad. She'd held her hand and they'd both cried and suddenly understood that death wasn't simply an endless sleep.
And now it was Nathan Scott's funeral, and they were burying him under all that dirt, with the bugs and the other rotting bodies, and it was his life that was over before it even had a chance to begin.
Brooke knew how ridiculous it was to lament over how unfair life was, but truly, there must be some law against this sort of thing. So many things had happened to them, in such a short succession of time, and it just.. it didn't make sense to her that just as things were starting to be okay again, the world could take Nathan away from them all, leaving Haley alone, leaving behind a little baby boy that would never know the gentle touch of his father, the effortless way that he could dunk a basketball, his laugh and his smile; they'd all be simply stories to this child.
And they stood outside, and it was drizzling ever so slightly, and it made perfect sense for the world to be crying right now; Brooke wasn't much for signs but she believed that this rain meant something, symbolized something, that the death of Nathan wasn't another thing that just happened, another sad story to be shared and passed down, that Nathan had meant something and had been important, and this was the universe's way of showing it's recognition and sorrow.
Brooke's heart broke every time she looked at Haley, who was standing a few people over from her, clutching tightly onto Lucas's arm; he seemed to be holding her up, and she wondered what would happen if he let go, if she'd just fall down. She was wearing big black sunglasses, a sad little umbrella doing its best to protect her from the rain (yeah, because that's what she needed protecting from right now). Her entire body shook, but she didn't cry; Brooke understood that, sort of.
Funerals were supposed to be this big private ceremony, where you were able to mourn the loss of someone that you loved, but they were anything but. People were everywhere, touching you and asking if you were okay, people that you had never spoken to before were suddenly acting as though they were your best friend. You couldn't cry because people stared at you, or they stared through you, as though your heart wasn't being so obviously ripped out of your chest in front of everyone.
Regardless of privacy and embarrassment, a part of Brooke wondered if she would have been less disturbed had Haley sobbed and screamed and looked as though she was hurting.
One Tree Hill
The minister (Haley had to continuously refrain from thinking of him as 'the stranger'), that didn't know Nathan, didn't know his favourite food or his jersey number, and probably didn't even know his middle name until today, was standing serenely by the coffin. He talked as though he had fond memories of a baby Nathan, as though he had been there to see all of Nathan's greatest triumphs... and his downfalls.
It infuriated Haley beyond explanation that this man was allowed to stand up here and give a heartfelt eulogy about her husband, while she was expected to play the part of the grieving widow, shake the minister's hand, thank him for the wonderful job he'd done, when in truth he hadn't done anything. All he had to do was paste a somber expression on his face for a little while, say a few blessings, and then it was all over for him.
In some part of her mind, Haley registered the fact that Lucas was standing next to her, holding her hand, and that on the other side of her was Deb and Dan, and they were actually standing beside each other, and it almost looked as though maybe Deb's hip bone was touching Dan's, in some tiny gesture of comfort: it made sense that the only thing that could bring them together would be the death of their son.
"To everything there is a season," the minister began, hands folded, head bowed, and Haley remembered the way she used to sit in the living room with her dad, perched on the edge of the couch armrest, singing the Byrds song before she had even known it was a Bible quote, "a time for every purpose under the sun. A time to be born and a time to die."
And then the rest of his speech was lost on Haley, because it was all suddenly washing over her, and she was realizing that Nathan's body was in that coffin, over there, and that it was just lying there and she wondered what happened to his soul? His heart had stopped beating, but surely that shouldn't effect anything else?
It struck her so suddenly, like a punch to the stomach, robbing her of breath, that she was never going to have another conversation with him. He was never going to see what their son looked like, and their son was never going to know what his father looked like. Maybe in five or ten years, maybe even less, she wouldn't be able to remember what Nathan's voice sounded like; she'd forget what he smelled like, the smooth texture of his voice.
She must have gasped or whispered, or made some kind of noise, because Lucas was staring at her, his mouth moving discreetly, and she dimly realized that he was asking her something, speaking to her. She shook her head, without even knowing what he was trying to say, and she was panicking, needing to get away from here, away from this tiny cluttered space and all these people, hundreds of people, none of whom could help her in any way because they were not Nathan.
Lucas seemed to understand what was going on, although she was positive she hadn't said anything. He led her out of the row of tightly packed people, past Brooke and Peyton. Brooke raised her eyebrows, silently asking if she was to follow, while Peyton reached out simply and gave Haley's hand a quick squeeze. He shook his head at them, gave what he hoped was a reassuring smile, and kept walking.
"It's okay," he said softly, "almost there."
And then soon they were far enough away from the crowd where everything was just sort of a low, hazy hum, and Haley was able to sink to the grass, her heels making little rectangular indents in the dirt, and Lucas was able to sink down with her and do the only thing he seemed capable of doing anymore: holding her tight to him, trying to soak up all her pain and hurt.
"It's okay," he whispered, over and over, and she didn't know what he meant by it, whether or not he was trying to soothe away her fears or his, but either way, it was a constant rhythm and for right now, that would do.
One Tree Hill
Peyton tried to remember what she had wanted after Anna had died, because she had been Haley, to some extent; maybe it had been worse for her, or maybe there was no scale for grief, but regardless she felt as though she of all people should be able to help Haley, to offer her some kind of advice and yet she could think of nothing.
She realized, or maybe she had always known, that this was because none of them had the only thing that could make this any better for Haley: Nathan. He was what she needed, the cure to a disease that only she had, so Peyton didn't ask if there was anything she could get for Haley, or tried not to anyway, because she remembered all too well the way it felt.
Complete strangers putting their hands all over you, acting as though they had a right to make you try and 'open up', whatever the hell that meant, people shoving food at you, as though eating would make it all better. Maybe it did in a way, because you felt as though it would close up the permanent hole, like all the food could clog up the place where they should be. It wasn't as though cookies or slivers of pie or plates heaped high with potatoes and beef could actually erase hundreds of memories, snapshots of moments that should have been a lifetime, but it helped to pretend.
They were hosting the funeral party (two words that surely should never, ever be used in the same sentence) at Karen's house, because it seemed morally wrong to do it at Haley's house, when pictures of Nathan were everywhere, baby pictures, pictures of a tiny boy with a basketball in his hand and a smile on his face. The whole house felt like it belonged in one of those children's books, where you had to try and figure out what was wrong with the picture, but instead of a goldfish swimming in the ceiling lamp, it was that Nathan was missing.
Peyton wondered how, exactly, you defined the term missing. Missing could be a little girl that wandered away from her mother in the super market for a few minutes, or it could be a frantic father reporting the abduction of his son. Nathan the person was missing, but all of Nathan's things were not (his sweater was draped over the kitchen chair, his deodorant was still in the bathroom cupboard), and neither were all the people that loved Nathan and so in that way, was he really missing at all?
One Tree Hill
When Brooke was little, she had an irrational fear of leaving her house, because home was safe. It was familiar: it was a bowl of Rice Krispies on a Saturday morning, parked in front of the TV watching Sylvester chase Tweety bird around Looney Toon Town. It was where she went to bed almost every night, where she woke up almost every morning. And because it was so routine and normal, nothing bad could possibly ever happen there.
She didn't know if it was because she watched too much news growing up and was constantly subjected to a million different levels of terror, or if it was just because she was little and it was one of those stupid things kids did, but Brooke hated to leave the house. Victoria usually had to drag her, literally kicking and screaming, out the front door whenever they went out.
She outgrew it eventually and in fact, it wasn't a long phase, because it didn't take her long to realize that while home was familiar and safe, it was also a lot like all the museums she ever went to as a child: beautiful to look at, but very cold and you weren't allowed to touch anything.
But now that she was older, and people brought guns to a highschool, and people were killed going to get ice cream for their pregnant wives, Brooke wondered why she had ever changed her mind about the sanctity and impervious state of home. She thought that maybe if everyone just stayed at home a lot more often, things wouldn't happen so much: people wouldn't get hit by cars and innocent people wouldn't be killed for no reason at all.
One Tree Hill
When Lucas had ushered the last intrusive mourner out the door, stacked all the paper plates and brushed crumbs of crackers from the tables into the garbage can, he went searching for Haley. She seemed to have disappeared a while ago, along with Peyton and Brooke. It didn't take him a long time to find them and when he did, he wasn't sure if he even wanted to disturb them: the three of them were lying on his bed, high heels discarded in a haphazard pile on the floor, blankets pulled up to their chins, mascara stains and bitten nails.
Haley was squished in the middle of them, but she didn't look at all uncomfortable; she looked, in fact, like the physical closeness, the feeling of warm bodies, knowing that they weren't planning on leaving her anytime soon, provided a solace of some kind, let her know that she wasn't entirely alone.
It broke his heart in a hundred different ways but at the same time, it made hope course through his veins and it really was a beautiful sort of mess.