On a Novel to be Written

I felt very out of place in the world that day. It was like I was standing in the room without actually being there, almost like I didn't belong. Then again, it wasn't the sort of room where anybody really feels comfortable. My father was on the other side of the room, sort of. Technically speaking, my father's body was on the other side of the room. Whatever it was that made that body my father had departed a few days earlier in a sterile room filled with charts, tubes, and wires. I was avoiding the coffin. I had looked into it once before the viewing started, but I just couldn't look it again. According to legal standards, I had been an adult for a little over a year, but peeking over the edge of that mahogany box and looking at the waxy features that I had seen in every possible expression of emotion allowed by the now dormant muscles beneath, I suddenly became a child again. I was overwhelmed by the unfairness of it all. Tears streamed down my hot cheeks, and my eyes grew all puffy and red. I felt very small.
People had been coming and going all day. You would never expect a real long visitation in a small town like this, but dad was the kind of guy who knew just about everyone, and they all wanted to pay their respects. The line seemed like it would never end. In fact, as afternoon stretched into evening, I was pretty sure it was getting longer. Fortunately our neighbors, the Millers, had come over early to help get things ready. They were good people who had owned the farm across the street from ours for as long as I could remember. I don't know what I would have done without them. They took the responsibility of welcoming people, shaking hands, and trying to offer encouragement. Mrs. Miller had always had a knack for comforting people. I remember having a number of scraped knees bandaged by that gracious woman after a fall while playing with her son, Micah. He was off at college now, studying engineering or something like that, but he was hoping to make it back in time for the funeral. Due to finals or some similarly difficult series of test, he wasn't able to join the long line of mourners that had currently gathered outside of the funeral home. They all wanted to talk to me. I knew most of their names, it's hard not to in a farming community like ours, but it was strange to have them all suddenly so intensely interested in how I was doing. I guess it was because, with dad gone, I would be in charge of the farm. Whenever a property got a new owner in our community, it was the talk of the town. I was hoping that wasn't the only reason they were talking to me, but I wouldn't have been surprised either. They all expected that they would be doing business dealings with me now that my father was gone. I wasn't really the oldest, but I was the one who stayed. I was the only one left.
My brother, Zach, had left five years ago. He had started off planning to go to college, but he dropped out after his first semester. Even then, he didn't come home. No one was all that surprised. Home had always been too small for Zach, or maybe it was beneath him. I was never entirely sure. We got letters from him occasionally, always with a different return address, but they were usually vague or hastily written. From what we could tell, he had become an actor and, if nothing else, was making enough to live on. Apparently his pay was as inconsistent as his correspondence.
I had tried everything possible to get a hold of him when dad's health started failing. He had been fighting cancer for a long time, and the doctors finally gave him six weeks to live. tried to call him, I wrote letters to the last address we had, I even made calls to a few of the friends he had during his brief stay at college, but none of them could give me any information. Still, no reply came. When the end finally came, I went through the whole process again with similar results and finally concluded that Zach had finally forgotten his family and had no intention of looking back at the life that he had worked so hard to escape. That is why I was so surprise when I received a tap on the shoulder and turned around just in time to be clasped in a bear hug so tight it can only come from a brother. I suddenly found myself face to face with my brother, Zach.