It was a beautiful funeral.

Closed casket, of course. What remained of him would not be a pleasant sight to see, even when it was all cleaned up and sewn together with clean clothes.

He was allowed to say his goodbyes in private. At least he had been afforded that. Well, he’d been afforded that before. When they brought his body in and put it on a cold table in a white room. But this was it. The real thing. His funeral.

The room was small – held maybe about fifty people. Light wooden floors. White walls. White ceiling. He felt that it was a horrible color, even for a funeral home. It was too bland. Too porcelain, too plain, too… white.

The chairs matched the light, sandy tone as the floor: they, too, were wooden. Fold-up chairs. All of them organized in little rows. With one aisle down the middle. He moved so slowly, so softly. The room was so quiet.

The casket was an absolutely beautiful piece. The wood was dark – that dark reddish-brown color, and it was absolutely unblemished. He deserved that. An unblemished funeral. An unblemished vessel to sleep in forever.

It was easier that way, you know? To think of him as asleep. Than to think of him as dead.

Death seemed so final. No return. No peace. No nuthin’. Just dead. A throwaway word, almost. It held no significance. It was an empty phrase.

But asleep? Yes, he deserved to sleep. After how hard he had worked. He deserved that kind of peace. Rest. Gentility.

His fingers slid over the wood. It really was a pretty casket. It was plain, except around the edges where it was intricately carved and inlaid with gold. He deserved that. He deserved glory at the end. He deserved no less.

He slowly picked up the flag and gently draped it over the coffin. He had died in the service of his country.

It was almost funny, how it had all panned out. With Jeonghan alive again, gripping a childhood sweetheart, he had buoyed up considerably. Taken over the political situation. He’d gotten China on their knees for peace talks in just a few months. War was over. The country could rest easy again.

But not him. He’d never rest easy after this. He might rest, but never easy. Because he wasn’t just missing a sun or a moon or a few stars, he had lost his whole damn sky. And without the sky, it was really hard to see where you’re going.

It was like being blind. No reason, or rhyme, or goal. Nothing to work towards, like there had been before. There was just… nothing.

At first the emptiness had been terrifying. There’s nothing worse than sitting by as the eternal abyss comes and swallows you whole. But he had learned to deal with it. Or, was learning. He should probably go into therapy. The pain of it all was gut-wrenching.

Now the abyss was a nice place to be. There was a hole in his mind where it was dark and damn and cold and worst of all, alone, but it was numb. It was a place he couldn’t feel anything, and if he couldn’t feel, then it couldn’t hurt.

Sometimes, coming out of the darkness was the bravest thing he ever did.

Once he was seated in the front row, other people filed into the small room. It went from a very cold room to a very warm room very quickly.

People were fanning themselves with little white pamphlets. The order of the day. The ceremony, another small ceremony at the grave, and then the wake.

He wasn’t sure whether he could go to the wake. He’d been promised it wouldn’t really be a wake: just a gathering of close friends and family at the café.

But he still wasn’t sure if he could go. It meant leaving the abyss for a few hours, at least.

People shook his hand, rubbed his shoulder, clapped on his back. Somewhere he recognized some of them as people he knew. But his conscious took no notice. He stared back with dead eyes, glazed over, no emotion.

Some nice words were said. He had no idea what they were.

Some men arrived and picked up the coffin, and panic almost went off. They were taking him. His body. Taking him away. Part of his brain controlled it. They were just taking it to the hearse.

He had a limo waiting for him. A big shiny fancy one. He wished he’d never had to sit in it.

The ride to the cemetery didn’t take long. Or maybe it did. He wouldn’t have noticed if he were on a 40-hour flight. He didn’t notice time passing anymore like he used to. Somewhere his head registered darkness in contrast to light, but he never got as far as night and day.

 When he stepped out, there was a long, steady, slow procession to the grave. The casket had already been lowered.

He wondered if he could really do it. If he could stand here and watch people throw dirt on his lover’s casket, bury him until he would never ever be able to reach him again. Could he stand silently and watch it happen without going crazy?

It felt like a water balloon. The kind he used to play with as a kid. They would fill and fill and fill, and stretch and stretch and stretch, until at some point they just burst and the water went everywhere.

He felt a lot like a water balloon.

He was filled up too much and far too empty, at the same time. And he was stretched far, far too thin. Anything could be his breaking point. Absolutely anything. It was just a matter of time before he went loony.

The words said at the grave were beautiful, to be sure. He didn’t hear any of them.