I sat behind the steering wheel staring off into the abyss before me, gazing off with no intentional stare as I find myself doing alot lately. The music from my Ipod played softly as my mom chatted on her cell phone on the hundredth call for the day. My two nieces sat with my lil sis in the back of the SUV, conversing back and forth as they usually do.
I slow to a halt and yeild to an approaching vehicle when my youngest niece catches my attention. "Did I cry?" she innocently asks.
I turn my head to catch her conversation with my sister, who replies "I don't know."
"What?" I ask.
"Did I cry," my neice asks again quite bluntly, "at my moms funeral?"
The car came quiet as I sat bewildered. I looked at my younger sis through the rear view mirror as she replied while staring at the floor a somber "I don't know."
My older sisters funeral was just weeks ago, and I sat in awe that her daughter, my niece didn't know whether she cried or not. Tears wanted to escape my eyes. "I can't remember," she said.
After another brief moment of silence, I answered her, "yes you did."
"Did I?!" she asked as if to be surprised. "When?" she went on, "At the wake or when we buried her."
"Both. But you cried alot when we were burying her. Your other Kokum (grandma) was holding on to you."
She sat quitely, thinking. "I don't remember," she said again.
"I do," I told her.
My brothers daughter, my other niece, started talking with her again; and then they were off in their own worlds again. As was my lil sis, who was now listening to her own Ipod, earphones and all.
From the corner of my eye I can see my mom glaring off into the horizon, just as I had been doing before the converstation started.
Slowly, I stepped on the gas and proceeded down the road so that we all may continue our Christmas shopping, which was only days away.
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