The Mourners

She stood in the corner, holding the photo in her hands. The chapel in the funeral home was slowing filling up with his friends and relatives, or that was who she guessed they were.  Luckily, no one paid any attention to her.  They were paying their respects to the older couple who stood by the door, a tall silver-haired thin man grasping a cane, and a tallish woman who appeared somewhat younger than the man.  Her hair was mostly covered by a flamboyant scarf of many bright colors, dressing up the plain “little black dress” she was wearing.   

They must be his parents, she thought.  I wonder who they’ll think I am, if they ever notice me.  They may wonder why I didn’t come in through the front door and greet them like all the other mourners.

That’s who we all are, she thought.  Mourners.  The word even sounds sad.  Moourn.  Mooourning.  Mooournful.  Moooourners.  She felt moisture seeping into her lower lids and willed herself to hold back tears.  If I openly cry, she thought, they’ll suspect that I knew him well enough to cry about him.  If I don’t, they might think I was one of his colleagues who is representing the firm where he worked.

Most of the other people who had come into the room were finding seats in the chapel.  Marsha waited until the seats were mostly taken before she took a seat in the next to the back row.  She didn’t want it to be obvious that she didn’t want to be  closer to the front. And she didn’t want to be on the aisle, either, in case they wheeled the casket down the aisle to the front door at the conclusion of the service.

It was only Christmas before last when that photo album showed up at her door that she then started her search for what must be her biological parents.  She had finally told her adoptive parents (how strange that sounds; until recently they had just been her parents, her plain parents) about the photo album and they had admitted for the first time that she was adopted by them when she was almost three years old. 

 Marsha had become consumed with the need to find out as much as she could about her biological parents.  Once the album appeared, left by who? Her mother? Marsha had begun her search during which it turned out to be surprisingly easy to follow the tracks of her biological mother, who had never left the City. What little she had been able to locate thus far told her that her parents had stayed together for a few years, and then separated.  She couldn’t find out whether they had ever been officially married.  Not that that mattered much, these days, but then it would have mattered more, unless they kept their unmarried state, if that was what it was, to themselves.

But the biggest news she managed to find was there was a baby brother—her baby brother—who had also been adopted, but at a much earlier age than when Marsha had been adopted.  It turned out to have been just a few months apart that the adoptions took place.  He was in one or two of the photographs in the album that someone (was it Marsha’s real mother?) had placed outside Marsha’s door. Marsha would give anything to know what prompted her parents to give up one, and then the other of their small children.  Whose idea was it? Her father’s?  That seemed more likely.  But her mother would have had to agree.  Was there no other choice?   

Marsha had tried to keep an even keel about all this new news.  After all, her adoptive parents (there was that strange term again—she didn’t like it).  After all, her PARENTS had given her a wonderful childhood.  They couldn’t have loved her more unconditionally, more openly, more generously.  No, she didn’t want to devalue them in any way with her driving need to know more about those previously unknown “real” parents.  She hated that term, too.  Her Real parents were the ones who had raised her, not the ones who gave her away, even if they thought they had no choice but to do so.   

Who were they looking out for, Marsha wondered, my welfare or theirs? She couldn’t help but have resentment against both of them.  No one she knew would voluntarily give up one child , much less two, when there was both a mother and the father in the house.  Someday, she decided, she might continue looking for her mother, and maybe, later, for her father.  But the one she felt the most compelled to find was her brother. Her brother who might also be totally ignorant that he was adopted.  He most certainly was innocent—he didn’t give himself up for adoption. Marsha felt a strong sense of kinship with this unknown brother. 

So, once again Marsha set out searching, this time for her sibling. Her brother.  A brother who would be in his early 20’s, perhaps even married.  He could have a child, or children. It was just coincidence that so soon after learning her real mother and father’s names and her brother’s name and by whom he’d been adopted that she browsed the obit section of the NY Times.  She sometimes did that looking for off-beat or unusual obituaries.  And there, as if in 4 foot high letters, was the heading under the photo that Marsha now held in her hands. 

 JAMES WINDERMERE,  26 years of age, died Saturday in an automobile crash while on vacation in Florida.  He was the only son of Gladys and Thompson Windermere, founders and owners of the Windermere Technical Group, and well-known benefactors of many cultural institutions in the City.   

Marsha skipped over all the rest of the accolades and achievements and went right to the end, where the announcement of funeral arrangements was listed.  Today, at 2:00pm in the Chapel of St. Mary, on 95^th Ave. 

Which is how Marsha came to be standing in a corner, holding a photo in her hands. And in another corner, an older woman, holding the same photo in her hands.