The Funeral

Source of photo: Linked in

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I didn’t avoid the funeral because you were going to be there.

In all honestly, I hadn’t thought of you at all until my husband – who did go – told me he saw you there.

I’m not sorry I missed seeing you.  It would have been a thirteen-hour round-trip and since my catastrophic – and permanent – burnout seven years ago, my body just can’t handle that big of a day.  But I’ve been thinking of all the things I could have/ should have said to you, had I gone, that we both know I wouldn’t have said because well, I never think on my feet.

The first time my daughter met you, she was 14 years old. Unlike her mother, she has never seen the world through rose-coloured glasses and as a result, she recognised you immediately for what you are “Who was the woman who…” she later asked me, wondering why a woman like her mother would invite a woman like that to her wedding.

I told my daughter you were friends with my husband. I told her we all worked for the same organisation. I told her every nice thing I thought I knew about you and still, my daughter – just a child at the time – stared at her naïve mother with exasperation. How, she wondered, could I not ‘see’ you for what you truly are?

How could I not ‘see’ a woman who would stop at nothing to claw her way to the top, to be exact. A woman who calculates her every move; who connives, who plans and who destroys when the time is ripe to do so. A woman who would casually say, at a gathering comprised of several friendly couples: “I’d sleep with anyone’s husband.” A woman so cut-throat she would do everything she could to destroy another woman’s career and reputation (including mine), all while smiling in her face and acting like her ‘friend’.

You know: that woman.

Over the years, I eventually did get to ‘see’ you. For the longest time, acknowledging that made me uneasy because I had so little experience with women like you. For the longest time, I set aside my doubts and naively hoped that being your ‘friend’ – at least, through my husband – would shelter me from your meanness.

You were nonetheless one of the people who destroyed me, in the end. I can’t blame you entirely, of course. There were a number of you, mostly all ‘that’ woman too. I didn’t know there were so many of you out there. And oh, all of you were merciless, mean, catty and cruel. You did your job so slowly, so thoroughly, so surreptitiously that by the time I cracked, you were all long gone, barely visible at all in my rear-view mirror.

It would take me years to fully understand what a great job you did in bringing me down.

Oh, there is so much I have wanted to say to you! But If I had seen you at that funeral, I would have done what I always do: I would have acted like the polite woman I was raised to be. I would have gone very quiet. I would have smiled a strained, uncomfortable smile. And I would have left without saying what I have wanted to say to you for years:

I ‘see’ you now. I have seen you for a long time…

Patti Moore Wilson © wednesdayschildca.wordpress.com

AND… A FEW PREVIOUS POSTS YOU MIGHT LIKE TO CHECK OUT…

• Psychopath (Originally posted on September 13, 2022)
• Getting Rid of the Garbage (Pandemic Clean-Up: Post 4) (Originally posted on March 30, 2020)
• Hold Your Head Up (originally posted on September 17, 2018)

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