We are gathered here today..
The room was quiet and sad. I could feel all the tension around me as I looked at the casket. For something that held so much death, it was so full of life. A woman who lay there just full of life and personality. I could hear the silent sobs of people around me who mourned the death of such a great woman. A woman who was like a second mother to me. A mother herself to four wonderful children. Two so small they wouldn't remember her now.
I kneel beside the casket as it held a precious memory to me. I talked quietly to the woman who showed me a lot about life. I silently asked her why she had to go so soon. Why did she have to leave her four amazing children behind? Why did she leave so early in their lives that two of them were in the other room completely unaware of what was going on around them? So many questions for someone who could never answer them.
This doesn't work as well as the two others I've just seen. You create the scene in the room, but here, I think, the writer is obliged to offer a little more about who the dead woman was, what she did that made her full of life and personality, how she was a second mother to you. Not so much detail as to kill the feeling of a vignette but enough to sustain it--right now, it's on life support. So, try a rewrite.
ReplyDelete