My black dress was chafing the skin under my armpits, my 'conservative' heels were giving me a liberal blister, and I was wearing non-waterproof mascara, because despite attending my own father's funeral, I hardly foresaw myself crying over his body being lain to rest far away from my mother's grave, but I kept my oversized black sunglasses perched atop my nose and covering half of my face to keep any prying eyes from realizing that my eyes were drier than the Sahara.

I stuck to the back of the crowd, in all actuality, and didn't even take the seat reserved for me during the outside service, opting for a thick pine tree shedding brown needles to the ground below my feet instead of the plush cushions of a black fold up chair in the dirt.

Sure, there was a faux weird carpet type of turf colored a vibrant green meant to look like grass that was used as the stage for the funeral, and my heels wouldn't have sunk into the wet soil underfoot had I been where I was supposed to be, but I just couldn't do it.

The funeral home service had been enough. I had paid my respects then, and played the doting, grieving daughter, but out here in the open, in view of my mother's headstone and final resting place?

That would've been a slap in the face to my mother's spirit had I shown him anymore respect than he ever even deserved. He didn't deserve any respect in death, not after what he'd done to my mother, but I wasn't doing this for my father.

I was doing it for me.

I deserved closure. I deserved to see his body be put in the ground, six feet under, never able to hurt me or anyone else ever again.

I'd noticed Sara and Jared in the middle rows of the outside ceremony, but they hadn't been in attendance inside the funeral home, like my aunt Kara had been. My grandmother offered to come with me, but I had told her that this was something that I needed to do on my own. I told her she was free to come, but that I would sit alone when the time came.

She told me she would come and visit her daughter's grave at another time, though, because there was no reason for her to come to Mike's funeral.

Despite his acclaim and massive amount of fans in the basketball community, not many of his high profile 'friends' had attended his public memorial service, or the private one that they had been invited to.

Maybe the truth coming out had affected his image more than I had assumed in the beginning. People were starting to put two and two together concerning his actions and attitudes, I supposed.

After the funeral, I was to go back to my childhood home and instruct the moving company as to what I was keeping and what I was donating or selling. No matter the bad blood between us, I would most likely ask Sara to come with me and have her tell me what she wanted to keep, because I had more things and money than I knew what to do with, certainly more than I needed.

The casket suddenly lurched, and I stepped forward, ignoring all of the sets of eyes on me as I walked forward on leaded feet.

Bending down, fingers curling around a clump of gravelly dirt, I straightened and said my final goodbyes to my father.

I wanted to say something harsh, hurtful, something that could encompass everything that I felt about him when he was living, but those words flowed out of me as I dropped that clump of dirt on his cherry oak casket, and I couldn't help imagining a decaying, rotted corpse on the inside even though I had seen him at his open casket and he looked just as he had before, only sleeping thanks to the embalming process.

No, he would need luck where he was going, because it wasn't anywhere good.

"Goodbye."

It was more than he deserved, but it wasn't for him. It was all for me, and it was time that I let go. It was time that I let go of all the hurt, all the pain, all the anguish. I couldn't hold onto it, not when he was dead and I had no one to direct all of that angst onto besides myself.

If I didn't let it go, I would point that towards myself, my grandparents, anyone in my life that I loved, and I wouldn't let him have that over me, I couldn't let him use his toxicity in the afterlife to control me in the land of the living. He didn't get to have that satisfaction, not even in death.

"I forgive you," I whispered, but I didn't forgive him because he ever would've asked my forgiveness. I forgave him for my sake, I forgave him for my mother's sake, because she wouldn't have wanted me to hold a grudge against a ghost.

He had done this to himself. He'd lived the rest of his life in a wheelchair and unable to play basketball anymore, and sure, he'd lived in somewhat luxury with his money, but what was money with no one to really love? He was in a prison of his own making, and in a grave that he had dug for himself, and that was punishment enough for me. he was serving his sentence somewhere else, and my mother was thriving in the sky waiting on her only daughter to join her when the time came.

The wind blew a gentle breeze through the swaying leaves, knocking some pine needles to the ground and stirring up the dirt that I'd just dropped onto my father's casket, the dirt swirling in the air in a circular pattern, a few specks flying up, up, and my eyes followed it around until finally it came to a stop to the left of the funeral party, beside a crowd of onlookers who weren't allowed over to this site because it was such a smaller, more intimate affair.

The tree branches swayed, clouds rolling in as the white tufts blotted out the sun and I drew away from everyone else following suit and saying their final goodbyes to my father, feet pulling me in the direction of the braying wind and bending limbs of all multitudes of trees planted in the cemetery.

A small fountain with a cherub angel shooting water from its mouth adorned a small garden with two plots surrounding it, one already taken up by my mother.

I crouched down low, brushing the debris and dead leaves from the granite headstone sunken into the ground, and I couldn't stop the tears then.

I wasn't alone, I had my grandparents, but there was something about the fact that I had no parents left that struck me deeply in my soul like a lightning strike, similar to the one that arced across the sky and lit up the cloudy sky. How long had I been standing there, staring a the trees?

Had it been mere seconds, or minutes? An hour?

The funeral was over. I was still kneeling in the dirt, wiping at my mother's headstone, like there was no tomorrow, because in that moment it really felt like there wouldn't be a tomorrow.

He hadn't won. He hadn't gotten away with murdering my mother, but still she was gone and she was never coming back. Still, he had rid the world of her sunshine presence, still the presence of her soul was no longer in the world.

The first speckle of rain fell on the tip of my nose, a few splatters sliding down the plastic of my sunglasses, but still I didn't stand and walk away, drive to the estate where I'd have to give away or sell the rest of my father's things.

There was a hand on my shoulder, but I didn't register it. Who could it have been? I didn't know, did I want to know?

Who did I have that would care about me here?

This place held nothing for me anymore. I didn't want it, any of it. My mother's body was here, that was it. I could come back and visit, but I couldn't live here, not in my childhood home. I'd sell it, live in New York or Jersey still with my grandparents.

I could do it, start over, build a life away from him, I was already in the process of doing it before he died. My life wasn't based on my father's ability to control me, I had to believe that. I had to.

"Come on, V. Let's get you out of the rain."

Her voice was soft, sweet, like she actually cared about me, but I knew that voice. She didn't care about me. She didn't care about anyone but herself.

I shrugged her off.

The rain fell harder. Thunder boomed across the earth, shaking the soil beneath my knees as the wet dirt soaked into the fabric of my dress.

Lightning surged once more across the late afternoon sky, but this time it struck a tree in the far distance and the resounding boom scared off the girl at my shoulder, but then someone else was there, under my knees and lifting me to their chest.

Goodbye, mom.