The shock of his father’s death had hung on him with the weight of the world, keeping him in a trance for a few days. The funeral had been a blur to him. He barely spoke a few words to the masses of people who seemed to appear out of the woodwork and then fade back into it. Their words were not much more than mumbled ramblings in his mind, not really finding his ear and not really ever reaching his mind or his heart, though he knew that many of them were meant to.

He shook hands and nodded; he kissed cheeks and hugged shoulders. He watched as a beautiful ebony box holding his father’s remains was lowered into the ground and roses were tossed on the top of it, where it lay in a canyon of earth, seeming as if it couldn’t possibly be further away.