Light in Her Eyes: Molly's Story Part One

Molly sat cross-legged on her bed reading People magazine and smoking a cigarette. Her back was to the lime-green-painted wall of the motel room, and the TV was on. Today had been a better then average day for business, and Thursdays often were. She had already put five hundred dollars in the bank, and would put at least that much in when the night was through. Molly was a modern-day prostitute.
She was not an ordinary hooker or whore that simply had sex for recreational purposes, although she did, in fact, enjoy it, or to obtain some kind of pleasure through drugs and alcohol. Molly was good at what she did, and what she did was please men, and on occasion, some women. One in particular, who drove trucks for Tropicana and came in on Sundays with the late freight and needed a place to stay. This worked well for the both of them. She needed a place to stay, and Molly hated sleeping alone.
Thursday nights were so busy because Molly had a high percentage of young men who wanted to jumpstart their weekend with a little sexual pleasure. Some of the men were newlyweds who had not quite bonded with their wives, or had too much money and not enough ideas to spend it on. Molly didn't mind them either.
Molly had a good reason for picking the profession that she did. She had a daughter who stayed home after school and would some day learn to be an engineer or some science that would give back to society. Molly didn’t care which, and her daughter could do what she did as far as Molly was concerned. But she hoped not. Her daughter took piano lessons, clarinet lessons, horse back riding, swimming lessons, etc. Molly believed that by instilling in her daughter the good things in life and the crafts used to make music and other arts would make for a well-rounded child. At least Molly thought so. She spent what time she could with her daughter, took her to zoos and Museums on the weekends and studied Math, Science, languages and the rest with her Mon-Wed. On Thursday and Friday, Molly sometimes left the house after tucking her daughter in, but lately had been leaving the house earlier and earlier. Katie knew what Molly did for work, and Molly kept no secrets from her daughter. She saw no need to. Already her daughter excelled in areas that Molly never could.
Of course she was right. Molly was abused by her father when she was young and forced into acts of sex by the age of twelve. Nobody in Garaithin held it against her for being the town call, and no one really cared. She served her purpose. Occasionally, a women's rights activist would find out about 4C on Perkins St., knock on the door, and try to convince her to change her ways.
"Don't lay down for men, but stand up for your rights! Take on a proactive job in the workforce. Prove to men that you can do it," one scraggly-haired woman with glasses said.
"How much do those jobs pay?"
"Well," she said pulling out a pamphlet and opening it, "you could be working as an Admin. down at Novak's making seven dollars an hour."
"Seven dollars an hour? That's not gonna put my daughter through school. Now you got some Tylenol? I've got a terrible headache."
"Oh, actually I don't, but I have some Advil."
"Sure, that will work. Can you give me two?"
"Ok." The granola girl dug through her bag and pulled out a bottle and shook two of the white tablets into Molly's open hand. Molly took the pills and popped them into her mouth.
"Thanks."
"You are welcome, now..."
BAM! Molly slammed the door and walked inside. The girl, stunned and rejected, stood outside for a minute and was gently pushed a side by a tall, potbellied man who entered the room, and shut the door behind him. The Women's Rights Activist heard a command and the door mechanism on the handle twist.
Molly knew women's rights. She was living them. She had had Katie when she was thirteen, and at a young age had decided on her own to keep the child despite the option of abortion and her own misgivings of the overpopulation of the world. Molly did not believe in kids, and up until that young age, she did not care for them either. She was a bright child, but fate had dealt her a raw hand. The senior high school boys saw the attractiveness and rawness in her and took advantage of it. One in particular, Bobby Bradshaw, the high school quarterback and often found her walking home alone and finally cajoled her into the car. Molly knew it was a bad idea, but she knew who Bobby was. Nobody said no to Bobby.
He drove her home, to his place, which in all actuality was not far from her father’s house. He lived in a newly restored and renovated colonial style house over one hundred years old, and had been the first house built in that part of town. His parents worked for the local college as professors, and were always leaving town for expeditions to do studies on the difference between men and apes. At that time, Bobby had informed her, they were in North Africa working with a group of apes, studying the differences between their mating habits and ours as humans. What neither Molly nor Bobby knew was that Bobby’s parents were actually, themselves, having sex with the apes to see if it was possible to produce a new species of man that had the benefits of both worlds. The school, of course, funded the research blindly because the Bradshaws came from old money and nobody questioned old money.
Regardless, Bobby had some experiments of his own that expressly involved Molly. Molly knew what he had in mind, and knew by getting in the car that she had already accepted what was to come. He invited her in the house and she agreed. Bobby put his arm around her as they walked in from the side porch and they removed their shoes. The addition to the house was modern, and was made of two walls of paned windows. There was a door to the garage and a door to the house. Molly placed her shoes next to the vacant dog bed, worn with lumpy grey fur. Bobby strutted into the kitchen triumphantly. He knew what he wanted. He had talked about getting it for a long time with his football buddies. They all laughed in a circle as he explained what he would do to her. Bobby was also a virgin, but Molly did not know this and neither did any of Bobby’s friends. Bobby had bragged to his friends that two years before he had slept with a girl from Ipswitch outside of Dover. It seemed realistic and plausible to them all that Booby had fucked the girl and that he had slept with many more than he shared. Bobby knew the truth, but fiction was better then reality for Bobby. At this point, he was sitting on the stool in the kitchen.
"Come on over Molly. Don't be shy."
He had walked in, gotten himself a glass, then put some ice in it. He filled it up with water, not offering her anything, and sat on the stool. Molly watched with mild contemplation. She did not care for this man’s behavior or his stature. She had come for one thing.
"Don't just stand there dumb. Come here."
She walked silently over to him with a caution in her movements. She rounded the counter that blocked his lower body to find him fondling himself in the open.
"Do you want to touch it?"
"Okay."
She reached down to where his hand lay on his crotch and held his penis firmly in her hand. He slid down on the stool, resting his weight on his feet and his buttocks.
"Put it in your mouth."
She knelt down in front of him, and he thrust his dick inside her mouth, a little more than she would have liked, had she had the choice. She grabbed the base with her hand, and lay her tongue flat out on the bottom. She had never done it before, and found herself growing excited. He did not last long, and came inside her mouth within what seemed like seconds, and was only slightly longer.
"Fuckin' A" He proclaimed as she choked and spat out his sperm on the floor.
"Sorry."
"Fuck it. Here are some paper towels." He tossed them down to her and walked off to take a shower.
"I'll see you tomorrow. Same time. Wait for me outside the school parking lot, and I will take you home from there." He nodded to her, and walked around the hall proscenium and up the stairs to his bedroom where he had his own shower. She cleaned up the sticky, white puddle, poked around ‘til she found the garbage in a closet, and let herself out.
She walked the main road to the dirt road that led to her house. The entire walk took no more then twenty minutes, and she was home with her school bag before her father arrived home. Unfortunately for Molly, her father had driven by the Bradshaw's on his way to work to discover his daughter getting out of the car with the youngest of their kids. He half expected what she was doing, but had no intentions of stopping her. Let her come home late, and he would show her the backside of his boot.
She walked into her room, shut the door, and began reading a book about a boy in London, who had started off with little or no means. It was for her English class that was taught by a flimsy guy that everyone, including her, suspected was gay. She heard the front door to the house swing open and close abruptly. When her father entered, the door often did slam with a forceful crash, but this evening’s pounding of the door told Molly that something was wrong.
"Molly."
Molly sat very still in her room not making a sound. She knew what would come next.
"Molly. Get in here! I gotta talk to you."
"Yes, sir."
Molly's father, Jon, had been a Marine right after Korea and right before Vietnam. He had beaten guys in his platoon for just looking at him while he was naked in the shower, and was given the nickname of Bruiser by the other men in the unit. He'd march up through towns, finding anyone remotely gay, and sending them bloody-nosed to the pavement. While stationed in Rota, Spain, this happened more than the company commander could stand. He'd be sent to the brig, and return ten days later only to do it again. What kept him in the service was his brute strength and ability to get the job done. He had been demoted several times, gone back up in rank, then demoted again. He didn't care, and when the rebels swelled in Spain, his platoon was called in first to clear up any problems. Jon was the first to go in.
There was a rush that entered Jon's body right before charging a mass of Spanish rebels on the cobbled streets of Rota. A rush of adrenalin he guessed that some doctors or scholarly types might call it. Whatever the case, that same rush entered his body in the front seat bench of his 1980 Ford pickup when he passed Bobby Bradshaw leading his daughter into the Bradshaw mansion. He could have stopped to get her, but decided to finish his plumbing errand and get her on his way home.
Now Molly stood behind her bedroom door, cowering indecisively, awaiting the blows to come. She shook herself, and stood up straight.
'I am not a coward,' she told her self, which she wasn't. Molly had lived with this man her whole life, and beatings for little things like losing a pencil at school or leaving her dolly on the couch when she went to bed were common place things in this dysfunctional household. She had faced the beatings before, so why was this time different? There was no way that he could know what she had done. There was no way that he could have seen her. She had probably just left the milk on the kitchen table, or he had noticed the extra cookie missing from the package from the night before. Crazy to think that he knew. She was a big girl now, and she could take care of herself.
She talked herself up like that for about two minutes while her father moved to the coat closet, removed both his boots and jacket, and placed them inside.
"Molly...Get out here now!"
She swung open the door quickly, and stood there facing the tall, overalled man bravely.
"Molly. What are you doing going into the house of a stranger? A boy?"
He knew, she was fucked. She looked at him in disbelief. How could this stupid man she called her father have figured that out? There was no trace, no note, no evidence. Had the Bradshaw boy called the house from the time that she walked from his place to hers? They had no answering machine, so if her father had been home, gone, and come back in that amount of time, he could have intercepted that call. But then why would the Bradshaw boy call here? He had gotten what he wanted. There's no way he saw her walk in, was there? Then she remembered her father’s plumbing job up at the MacGloughlin's at 4:30, which he would drive to at 4:20 pm from the shop. He always left ten minutes before every job whether it was twenty minutes away or five. Why hadn't she thought of this before? What difference would it have made? Where would she have gone? Molly was by no means a dumb girl. She figured that it was possible that her father drove by and saw her get out of Bobby's car at the exact moment they were walking towards the mansion. (Her father called anything that was bigger than their one-story mini-ranch a mansion.) She remembered right before she had exited the door, she had looked at Bobby, and upon glancing at him had noticed the neon baby-blue car clock had read 4:22. Two minutes after her father left for the plumbing job, which would have taken him right past the Bradshaws’. The Bradshaws’ house was a two-minute drive exactly from the shop. She clenched her fist in aggravation. Why hadn't she put that together before? She tried to remember if any cars went by while she was walking with Bobby's arm around her. She could think of none. Later, many years later, Molly would look back on this experience and recall that she was probably overwhelmed by the intensity of the situation, and the only thing going through her mind was that she was with Bobby Bradshaw the most popular boy in school. She got a little annoyed by the thought that a girl like her would get all queasy and lose control of her intellect at such a crucial moment, with such a controlling and abusive father. Of course, she would never make that mistake again.
While all this was going on in Molly's head, her father had advanced on her ten feet, and put his right arm on her left bicep and squeezed. She flinched arched her back to the side, wincing in pain.
"I asked you a question Molly?"
Wait-- another one, or the one that she missed while she was trying to figure out how this imbecile had caught her? Pure luck was on his side, and the growing pain throbbing up her neck and into her head was on hers. The fates were cruel. She stifled a sob and peeped out, "What question?"
Smack. That was the sound of his hand across her face. No use. The first tears sprang out of her eyes on to the floor much like the come from Bobby Bradshaw’s dick had an hour or so before. The comparison hit her as she looked up at her father with a tear-strewn, red-cheeked face. It almost made her laugh, except that when she straightened herself up to look at him again, he came down on her even harder, this time splitting her cheek.
She let out a noise. A cross between a sob and a laugh. To her, the situation was almost comical. Here was a man three times her size beating her like a dog that had attacked a neighbor’s child. Except she hadn't, and as far as he was concerned, he didn't know anything that had transpired between her and Bobby. That is what really made her want to laugh. The situation’s pure loss of sanity. Now, when she came up a third time with that resolute look on her face, and he drew the back of his hand across that defiant face of hers, now she was crying. He let her arm go, and she slumped to the floor nearing unconsciousness.
"Fine, Molly. Don't tell me what you done with that boy. But if I ever catch you going into his house or any other boy’s for that matter, I'll beat you so good, you'll wish that I ended you. You understand me?"
Now, if Molly could have responded the way that she wanted to, she would have laughed again. Oh no sir, you better believe I am not going to get caught. But yea, I am going to go back there and just you try to catch me. Cause I am going to fuck, suck, and screw every boy from here to Bristol. And boy won't that make you mad when I am gone.
She got about two feet from her bed crawling and she lay her head on the floor. So nice, the polished wood floor.
She lay her head on it, and went out.
For the next five years, Molly and her father never talked about that night, and he never laid a hand on her again. He did not need to in his opinion, and he did not need to in hers. He went on about his days, dying haphazardly in a water main burst, and she went on pleasing the high school boys, unknown to him, until the day he died.

The Beginning

Garithin lay just on the outskirts of the city having the population of a struggling suburb with little class and little hope of attaining any in the near future. The inhabitants of Garithin are law abiding citizens. They drink, do drugs, and have premarital sex as most free Americans are want to do.

On the particular day that our story takes place, the sunset fell on the buildings and trees with a red hue on the clouds and a blue dusk lying down on the rooftops. Men moved from the bicycle factory owned by old Martin J. McGraver Jr., which had been started in order to curb the tide of oversized vehicles. Old McGraver, as everyone called him, had been a wealthy oil tycoon his whole life. He had worked for the big companies as a supplier having acquired lands with oil wells in Texas several years after the war. He had been raised Christian, and was neither a tall nor a short man, but commanded respect wherever he went. He was a kindhearted soul, which accounts for his turnaround in business at such an old age.
McGraver had, at one time, been a ruthless business man, despite his personal politics of befriending everyone he met. Once he stepped into his suit and into the meeting room, he changed. It was buy, buy, buy. Send the geologists out, bombard the earth with aerial shots, find the oil, and buy the land. Then send in the mercenaries and drive the inhabitants off. He had been quite good at this, received the designation from his colleagues as "Oil General" and dedicated his life to the exploitation of the Earth’s most valuable resource.
Until He met Molly.
More about McGraver later. The important thing to note is that he changed, and invested his time in making bicycles and other free-powered vehicles for sale for the greater good. There will come a time when the story of McGraver's assent from hell will be necessary, and you will awe at the turnaround of this tycoon. And how Molly brought it about.
Now working at the bicycle factory was a young man in his late twenties named Steve. Steve drove a brand new Chevy pickup truck that burned precious fossil fuels. Steve was not a bad guy contrary to his lack of support for the company. Actually, most of the employees at McGraver's bike factory drove cars to and from work. Most of the bicycles were shipped to Seattle and Cleveland, where people abandoned the cars roadside for the freedom of wind-through-the-hair bike riding. Steve, however, did not. He enjoyed listening to the country music radio station to and from work, and considering he lived seventeen miles away, he quite enjoyed the warmth of his cab when December and January rolled around.
Steve also had a history with Molly. Every Thursday after work, Steve drove past the corner store, grabbed a pouch of Bali-Shag smokes, and rode over to Molly's place. In all actuality, it was not Molly's place, but Burt Stanson's Motel on RT. 9 just a little more outside of the suburb, outside of the city. It was a nice, remote location that received a plethora of sunlight during the day. Steve drove up to the front of the motel building every Thursday at almost exactly the same time. He knew this not because he looked at the clock radio that adorned his dash board, but because of the way the sun slid over the hood of his truck as he drove into the second parking spot from the manager’s office. The only Thursdays he was not exactly sure of the time were the days when it rained or snowed. The latter of the two rarely happened and the former every so often. On this particular day, the sky sparkled red and Steve turned the ignition, killing the engine, and took a puff from his cigarette. He still had about fifteen minutes before he headed up to her room, so he just sat on his freshly vacuumed cloth car seats and slid down in the chair a little. He rolled down the windows and breathed deeply the fresh Garithin air. Steve had never really breathed in much of the earth’s other air except for a couple locations in Europe, Iraq, and Kentucky. Aside from those times, Steve had been a dedicated breather of Garithin air for the past twenty-five years, and he liked it that way. He was quite pleased with the air, its rich, humid, full of freshness, with a tint of coolness in the spring and fall, and the robust, sometimes sweltering, thick air of the summer.
Steve puffed from his rolled cigarette and held in the nicotine for a bit. He hadn't always smoked. He hadn't even smoked while in the army, but he had always hung out with the smokers. He hadn't really started smoking until he dated Betty. Betty had smoked three to four packs a week, and Steve had been around her nonstop every day for almost a year. When you spend that much time with someone, it is inevitable that you pick up some of their traits and habits. For Steve, it was smoking, and he hadn't quit when they broke up, and that was several months ago. Steve still missed Betty, and had not decided to move on as of yet. Molly was a good place to start but nothing serious, and he knew it. She had her place in his life, and in the town, and everyone knew it. There was nothing more there than what he would have with her in ten minutes and that would only last ten minutes or so after that. He was okay with that. She, Molly was okay with that. The whole town of Garithin was okay with that. That is just how it was, and how it had been for as long as they could all remember. Some of the housewives might think it a crude way to make a living, but Molly was no crude girl, nor were her figures. She was fast approaching a middle-aged woman, but she possessed the desire, will, and passion of a teenager. She was giving, and sharing, and she cared deeply about her daughter.

All this Steve knew, and so did the town. Steve spent the next two minutes thinking about Betty, the two minutes after that thinking about his dog, Belly, the one minute after that about what he was going to have for dinner, and the five following about Iraq. Steve had been a homegrown American boy who believed in fighting for his country. That hadn't changed, but beliefs inside of him had. It is interesting that in the eighteen months that he marched from Fallujah to Bagdhad, he had passed Old McGraver five times, on five separate occasions, and didn't even know it. For the Old McGraver's part, he did not know it either. The lives they lived touched more often then some lovers for two strangers, yet their own conscious connection of the facts was less then none.

After Steve had finished running the story of his friend Miller (who had died last year due to a land mine exploding off the side of the road in Iraq) through his head, he sighed, put out his cigarette in the ashtray, and slid out of the truck onto the parking lot floor. As Steve locked --an unnecessary precaution-- and shut the door, he thought about Miller. He walked to the stairs that led to the second story of the motel and remembered how Miller had been the bully of the platoon. Somehow, Steve had managed to avoid this abuse despite his lack of size on Miller. Regardless, Miller had always found in Steve something amusing and fun, which saved Steve from a world of hurt and bruised eyes. Steve walked along the balcony and looked over his right shoulder to the setting sun. Two dormitories on the college campus besmirched it, which loomed liked the legs of a giant in a forest with no torso. Steve loved to look upon the mixture of man and nature and the sun's last blessing of the day on them both. He breathed deep again the mixture of steel, wood, and wind that gently rushed by his face and through his hair as he stepped outside of room 4C. He looked out across the parking lot, into Sergeant's Field, across the stadium, through the dorms, and into the mountains. A thought entered his mind as the sun cusped away. He chuclked, turned towards 4C, turned the door handle, and entered the room.

Huh, ooo ahh ahh ahh

I am not up on the latest trends and such
who is cool and who is not
I hate being hip at the same time
but I hate not being
it is a very dangerous place to be

Hey, somebody throw me a bone here. I think I need to learn flash.

Huh, ooo ahh ahh ahh

I am not up on the latest trends and such
who is cool and who is not
I hate being hip at the same time
but I hate not being
it is a very dangerous place to be

Hey, somebody throw me a bone here. I think I need to learn flash.

The Truth

Break ups are never easy.

Tomorrow I will go to see a therapist at around 7:30pm. Hopefully it will help my deppression.

My father talked to me on the phone this evening and said something very profound. "You know. You might be missing Lauren more then you realize. The way you feel. You might find that most of it is because of her."

Of course he is right.

The room moving has gone on well and I am making agreement's with myself everyday. The place that I work at is very deppressing. But if I can make it through happy working there, then I can make it any where.

"Things are gonna change, I can feel it!"

This Sucks!

The Truth

Break ups are never easy.

Tomorrow I will go to see a therapist at around 7:30pm. Hopefully it will help my deppression.

My father talked to me on the phone this evening and said something very profound. "You know. You might be missing Lauren more then you realize. The way you feel. You might find that most of it is because of her."

Of course he is right.

The room moving has gone on well and I am making agreement's with myself everyday. The place that I work at is very deppressing. But if I can make it through happy working there, then I can make it any where.

"Things are gonna change, I can feel it!"

This Sucks!

Angry before

Watching someone who you love walk away.

Being left.

What am I running from?

Myself.

But what does that mean?

I don't know. I am tired and can't think like this anymore. I tried to move my room today. I am moving into the room opposite of mine which is bigger. The change of space did not have the desired effect.

Went to the cast party. Everyone there was very melancholy.

One of the attendees said, "What you put out there comes back to you three fold."

I should make some breakfast tomorrow.

I am getting sleepy for the first time in almost a week.

Sleep, here I come.

I have not remembered my dreams in weeks. It would be nice to dream again.

Good Night.

In A Cage, and How To Get Out.

Well, I am not eating today. I am finding it hard to after last night’s news. I walked about two blocks, balled my eyes out, and then went to ATA. I must be the only man in New York who cries in public.

After getting to the show, I went into the dressing room, put on my clothes and made my usual phone calls. Sisters, mother, father, and someone else. Random person number 5 I think.

Then about 35 minutes into the play it started to mist, and then finally rain. The audience left right before my scene, and by the time I got out in the down pour to spout my lines, there was only one audience member left. He planned on staying to the end, but Tim convinced him to leave. So, the show ended after the first act, and we went out for drinks, and I drank more then my fair share and woke up other then in my own bed. Things are a little complicated right now, and I am pretty upset from recent events.

I have the dinner I spent way too much money on last night, sitting in my bag. Maybe I will eat it for dinner. Now that I think of it, I have not eaten all day. Well, some cookies, or wafers, or what have you.

Usually I would be more festive and write about some thing crazy, or try to make you laugh. But there really is nothing to write about that is funny. I am bummed. And I don't think that I will make it to McCann's Funeral tomorrow, which also adds to the guilt.

The Guilt.

Where did it come from, and who installed that program on my hard drive?

Yes, at this point I can refer to myself as a computer. Computers have memory and so do humans. Computers have viruses and so do I. Computer's have mainframe, CPU functions and the like, and, well, we have mental problems.

Guilt is one of these. Guilt really has no purpose, other then to make us feel bad for doing what we want to do, which will inevitably hurt someone else. Guilt makes you cry, guilt makes you stay with someone for a long or longer time then necessary. Guilt makes you wonder why things didn't work out, and worry about things that have or will never happen. It brings you down and makes you think. Guilt is a nasty virus. The best remedy for guilt is honesty. But if someone is not being honest to you about the little things, eventually they won't be honest about the big things either. Of course, Einstein said that the man that searches for the truth is a fool. Or something along those lines.

Sometimes we are caged animals and when we are released from the cage, we go right back into it. The outside world is scary, and we know where out Water dish, food dish, and crap pan are located. The four corners have been set up. Sleep, Eat, Drink and crap. Except of course if you live in a circular cage. (These may possibly exist, yet I have never seen one. Most cages that I have experience with have four corners and are referred to as "Square" or "Rectangular". To find out more about circular cages read my chapter on such cages aptly titled "Chapter 7: The Circular Cages." Now, it is also possible that a cage is jagged and non-congruent. These will be discussed in the chapter proceeding Chapter 7, Chapter 508 "Chapter 508: Jagged, Non-congruent, and odd shaped Cages. How to Escape and what to do if you are in one." Also discussed in this chapter: Where to put your Food Dish? Can My Crap Pan and Food Dish be put in the same corner? Can they be consolidated into one dish? ETC.) For arguments sake, we will say that you are in a square cage and so am I. The point is that we hide. From ourselves mostly, and from others. We are afraid of what and who we really are, and will even go as far to crucify ourselves and our own identity to protect ourselves from others persecution. Sort of like the Black man in the south that walks up and down the streets yelling racial statements against blacks, waving a confederate flag. Why does he do it to this day? He is afraid and probably lost something near and dear to him because of his black identity.
So the cage is nice, and we stay there for days, months and even centuries. Except of course we are skeletons by that point, and nobody really cares about us including ourselves. Looking at the situation like this, you quickly realize that what is outside the cage is really not worse then what is in it. But how do we break the desire to be caged when we are the ones doing it to ourselves? Why would we want to by imprisoned, hurt and scorned? When is enough, enough?

Sometimes your up...

Well, it happened. Again.
Not really sure who reads this, but you can guess what I am talking about.

Once again, I have pissed off a woman and driven her away due to my stubbornness not to change.

Now I am sad.

Which happened last time.

At least this time I have friends.

That is the news for today.

The End.

And my old school friend McCann Milton died last Saturday, and I don't think that I will beable to go to the Funeral.

Also very sad.