That thought alone made my heart tighten in a way I could not control, because my mind kept rejecting what my eyes were seeing. A part of me kept expecting her chest to rise, her fingers to twitch. I needed something, anything that would prove that this wasn’t real.
I stared at her longer than I should have, my eyes moving over every detail like I was trying to memorize her before it was time to say my final goodbye. However, somewhere in the back of my mind there was still a part of me that refused to accept that this was the last time I would ever see my baby girl, and that refusal didn’t feel like denial. It felt like defiance, like my mind was rejecting a reality it did not agree with.
My daughter…
My only daughter…
And the weight of those thoughts sat with me because I had already buried my sons, and now I was staring down at my daughter like she was the last piece of something that had already been taken from me piece by piece.
I swallowed hard and tightened my grip on Jamie’s hand again when I felt her fingers start trembling against mine. When I glanced at her, the tears were already falling down her face without restraint, her body barely holding itself upright as she stared down at our baby like she was waiting for her to move. Watching her like that did something to me because I knewexactly what she was hoping for, and I knew it wasn’t going to happen.
We had not been right for months, and that truth still sat between us even here, when nothing else should have mattered but the child we were burying.
Right before Echo’s murder, we had been living in the same house like two people who knew exactly how much damage had been done and did not know how to come back from it. We slept in different rooms, moved around each other carefully, and only spoke when there was something that had to be said. But grief had a way of stripping pride down to nothing, and after losing Rioh and Jaqwon, then standing here over Echo, while our only living child A’Mii stood beside us, there was no distance left for either of us to hide in. None of that distance mattered anymore because whatever space we had tried to create between us had been buried right along with our children.
Grief seemed to always have a way of forcing people back together whether they want to be there or not. Now, here we were, standing side by side, holding onto each other like the only thing we had left was each other, even if we both knew how broken everything between us really was. And even in this moment, with her hand in mine, I could feel how fragile everything was, like we were both barely holding onto something that had already been torn apart.
I lifted my free hand and brushed my thumb under my eye when I felt another tear fall. I didn’t bother hiding it because there wasn’t a reason to pretend like I was still holding myself together while I stood over my daughter after already laying my sons in the ground.
The thought of Rioh and Jaqwon hit me all over again in a way that sat unbearable and refused to move no matter how much I tried to steady myself, because every time I thought about them, it led me right back to this moment, right back tothis casket, and right back to the reality that I had buried three of my children.
I let out a slow breath through my nose and forced myself to stand still because if I allowed my body to follow everything I was feeling, I would have lost control right in front of everybody.
The church was full.
Every seat was taken, and people lined the walls in quiet respect while Echo’s friends sat closer to the front, some of them crying openly, others staring at the casket like they couldn’t make sense of what they were looking at. Members from her support group were here too. They were the same people she spent her time helping, guiding, listening to, and now they were here mourning her like she had once helped them as they mourned their loved ones.
It should have made me proud, but instead, it made me angry. It pissed me the hell off because my daughter should have been here running that group, not lying in front of it, and not being talked about in past tense like her life had already been reduced to memories and stories.
I shifted my stance slightly and glanced toward the pastor as he continued speaking, his voice carrying throughout the room with practiced calm as he talked about peace and rest and God’s plan. I listened just enough to be respectful, but none of those words were reaching me the way they were supposed to.
There was no peace in any of this, and there damn sure was no understanding that could make it sit right with me. All I felt standing there was loss stacked on top of loss, and every piece of it kept leading back to one man whether anybody wanted to say his name out loud or not, and that man was Kay’Lo Mensah.
Even thinking his name made something inside me harden, and I felt my jaw tighten without me realizing it because I hated him beyond my own comprehension.
My legal team had been keeping me updated every single day, and even though I had been ordered to stay out of the courtroom, I still knew exactly what was happening in there, from what his employees said on the stand to the way they tried to frame the entire situation like my sons walked into something they deserved instead of what it really was.
They said Rioh and Jaqwon walked into the shop aggressive, that they pushed the situation, that Kay’Lo told them to leave, and they did not listen. Somehow, that turned into justification for two men ending up dead on the ground in broad daylight.
That was the story the defense was building, and it was the same version of events they kept pushing every time one of his workers took the stand, like if they repeated it enough it would start to sound like the truth instead of what it really was. The more I heard it, the more it made my insides burn, because I knew exactly what they were doing, and I knew exactly why it was working.
I clenched my teeth slightly and looked back down at Echo. All I could think about was how either that sorry punk Kay’Lo had something directly to do with it, or somebody in that psychotic ass family made sure it happened. The more I thought about it, the less I believed any of this was coincidence. Too much had been taken from me for this to be random.
I exhaled slowly and focused back on Jamie when I felt her lean into me just a little more, her weight pressing against my side like she needed something solid to hold onto. I shifted my arm just enough to support her without drawing attention, even though my mind was nowhere near her in that moment.
When the pastor finally finished speaking, the room shifted in a way that let me know we were moving into the part I had been dreading since the moment I stepped inside the church.
The casket was finally closing…
I felt Jamie’s fingers tighten around mine instantly, and when the funeral directors stepped forward and began preparing to close it, something inside her broke. She gasped softly, and her other hand flew to her mouth as she shook her head.
“No…” she whispered, her voice barely holding together as she shook her head like she was trying to stop time from moving forward. “No, not yet…”
I turned toward her fully and brought my hand up to her shoulder as she cried harder, her body trembling against me while she stared at our daughter like if she held on long enough, they wouldn’t take her away. I felt that same helplessness in me because I wanted to say something that could steady her. I wanted to say something that could make this feel like it wasn’t final, but there were no words for this, and there was nothing left to fix. So, all I could do was hold her right here while they closed my daughter’s casket in front of us.
The sound of it settling into place was something I knew I would hear for the rest of my life because it carried a finality that nothing else could soften.
The pallbearers, A’Mii being one of them, stepped forward shortly after. They were men from different parts of Echo’s life, and they carried her with care as they moved down the aisle. The entire room rose to their feet as she passed.
