Seat One: The daughter
	Sympathy.  It has to be one of the most trite, insincere 
emotions in the world.

	At least, that would be what Samantha French would tell 
you, if you asked her at this moment.  To be fair, this might not 
be the best time to ask her.  Sitting in the family pew at the 
funeral for her estranged father, it would be obvious to any 
onlooker that the context would influence Samantha’s answer.  
It was certainly influencing her thoughts at the moment.

	‘Why am I here again?’ The young woman thought as she 
shifted in her seat again. At twenty-four, Samantha thought 
herself way too young to be burying a parent, but that wasn’t 
the main source of her discomfort.  Her discomfort came from a 
combination of her itchy, long, black dress, her uncomfortable 
“sensible” black pumps, and the fact that she didn’t like anyone 
she was sitting near.

	For example, to her far left sat her stepmother.  Admittedly, 
at the moment the woman was locked in silent grief, but normally she 
was very vocal of her dislike of Samantha.  Samantha was never sure 
exactly why Tanya Hollingsworth French was so threatened by her, but 
Tanya’s response to her step-daughter was so strong it was toxic.  
And usually very loud.  The grief stricken silence was actually a 
nice change.  ‘A thought which will surely send me straight to hell,’ 
Samantha chastised herself.

	To Samantha’s immediate left, between her and her stepmother, 
sat her aunt.  If asked, Samantha would admit to loving her aunt, in 
large part because she was biological family, but she usually didn’t 
like the woman.  With her hair in a French roll and a black hat 
complete with veil, which covered half of her face, Ashleigh French 
Tarrington cared most deeply about two things: fashion and status.  
Ashleigh also had a devious streak and put it to use in obtaining 
and maintaining status and fashion.  Ashleigh’s own daughter, Soliel, 
seemed to be ranked about eight on her list of priorities.  As her 
aunt’s only niece, Samantha herself was fifteenth on that list, 
shooting up a few places if she did something that showed a disregard 
for fashion or status.  Things Samantha swore that she didn’t do for 
her aunt’s attention.  The twenty-something never cared about either 
fashion or status, often stumbling over both fashion and status by 
accident, never on purpose.

	The itchy black dress was a good example of that.  Given 
only two days notice about the funeral, Samantha ran out and bought 
the first black dress that fit and looked appropriate.  She really 
had no idea it was featured in that month’s Vogue until Ashleigh 
told her as they were lining up to go into the church.  It had 
actually caused a smile to flit across her aunt’s face for a little 
while.  ‘At least something good came out of this heinous thing,’ 
Samantha thought to herself as she tried to discretely scratch at 
the lace of the dress.

	As Samantha mused over her fashionable aunt, a loud, pained 
sob to her immediate right made Samantha jump in surprise and bump 
into her aunt.  Ignoring her aunt’s brief (but fashionable) look of 
displeasure, Samantha glared at the source of the hysterical crying.  
Her darling cousin, Soliel Kelli Tarrington, was putting on a show, 
all over an uncle she rarely saw.  The way she was falling all over 
herself in tears one would think she was burying her father…or her 
son.  ‘Any minute now, she’s going to throw herself on my father’s 
casket and start screaming “Why?!  Why did you leave us?!”’

	Her last thought had caused Samantha to smile and she 
probably would have continued to smile if her cousin hadn’t 
scream-sobbed again.  ‘Spoiled brat.  Maybe we should just 
get her her own stage.’

	There was a time, when they were two and three and a half, 
respectively, that Samantha and Soliel were friends.  After all, 
they were first cousins, and while Samantha had over twenty first 
cousins on her mother’s side, she only had Soliel on her father’s 
side.  And family is important.  But this over-achieving, braggy, 
full-of-themselves family was just a trial.  One that Samantha 
opted out of as soon as she was old enough.  Soliel wanted the 
world to revolve around her.  Only her opinion mattered.  Only 
her accomplishments were important.  She had the best “man” in 
the world.  She had the best job.  She was making a difference.

	She was making Samantha sick.

	Of course, Soliel had to make things worse by snidely 
talking about how lucky Samantha had it.  Samantha’s father, 
Uncle Jay, was amazing.  Samantha was the pretty one, with her 
brownish red hair and “petite” frame, even thought Samantha was 
5’7”.  Admittedly, her cousin Soliel was over six feet, but that 
didn’t mean that Samantha appreciated being called short. Yet, 
in Soliel’s nasty little brain, all of Samantha’s faults were 
somehow “wonderful” and poor little perfect Soliel suffered.  

	As she looked over at her sobbing cousin, Samantha sneered 
internally, ‘Sure, I had it so good.  Tell you what.  You can have 
the father who laced a few good moments with lots of hurtful words 
and who practically cut you off at eighteen.  You can have the evil 
stepmother.  You can have the extended family that doesn’t call you, 
even though you lost your father. You can have the struggles of 
graduate school, the non-existent social life, and the self-confidence 
that has taken a battering.  I’ll take your pay-check and fashionable 
haircut and go on vacation.  But you can keep your mother and father; 
I’m screwed up enough, thanks.’  Samantha sighed quietly.  She would 
have never sat this close to her cousin if she could have avoided it.

	On the other side of her cousin sat Soliel’s man, Robert 
Jefferson.  While Samantha would admit that Robert was attractive, 
a typical tall, dark, and handsome man, he wasn’t her type.  He 
seemed weak, but that may just be because he seemed to let Soliel 
and Ashleigh push him around.  The first time she saw his 
acquiescing in person, she figured that maybe he was just trying 
to make a good impression so that he could become a part of the 
family.  But, after seeing the same behavior over and over and over 
again, Samantha decided that Robert was just a push-over.  No one 
in their right mind would want to be a part of the French family 
that badly.  But hey, her cousin probably needed someone to fawn 
over her day and night.

	  A row behind them sat Samantha’s stepbrothers and sisters.  
There was Kayla, the lawyer on marriage two; Kyle, the abuser; Kara, 
the unmotivated slacker; and Kevin, the angry one.  Even as she sat 
there, she could hear their whispered.  Kayla murmured how she should 
be on the first row and that Samantha had no business there because 
she wasn’t a good daughter.  Kyle and Kara seethed about being left 
off of the family row; Kara muttering that she better get something 
out of the deal.  And Kevin, who obviously didn’t want to be there, 
seemed rather happy that Joseph Thomas French the Third was dead.  
‘Any moment now, he’ll break out in a version of “Ding, Dong, the 
witch is dead”.  If he had his way, we’d be throwing a party now,’ 
Samantha shook her head slightly.  At least that was honest.

	But as to why Samantha thought sympathy was trite.  Sympathy, 
at least from the people who had been offering it all day, was always 
applied generically to every situation.  These people, who didn’t 
know her, would come up to her and say the stupidest things.

	“I’m sorry for your loss,” one lady would say.  And Samantha 
would think, ‘Would you be anything else but sorry?  Besides, you 
don’t even know me.  Do you know if I even think this is a loss!’  
Samantha did think it was a loss, for a lot of reasons that now 
would remain between her and her Maker, but it wasn’t a given.

	Other people had said, “God will comfort you through these 
rough times,” as they hung onto their bibles and crosses.  To which 
Samantha wished she could say, “My father’s funeral is not some pop 
quiz of God’s for you to demonstrate how religious you are.  And 
really, if I was more of a mess about this than I am, I really don’t 
think that phrase would help.  Like I’m really going to say, ‘Oh, 
I’d forgotten about God!  Thank you so much!’ and start smiling.”  
These “religious” people were also the same ones who would go home 
and gossip about her family’s pain, Samantha was sure.  ‘Really,’ 
she thought, ‘people just need to leave the imparting of God’s 
comfort to the minister.  He was the one trained to do it.’

	And, of course, there was her favorite, “You must be so 
proud of your father.”  That one always annoyed Samantha.  Why 
should she be proud of her father?  Yes, the man had done amazing 
things.  And yes, at times she would proudly claim him and thank 
people for saying nice things about him.  But pride? Over her 
father?  It’s not like she had anything to do with anything he 
accomplished.  It wasn’t even like they had a great relationship.  
All these people saw is the perfect little family.  They knew 
nothing, but thought, with one little sentence, they had shown that 
they were a part of the inner circle of the deceased.

	Besides, it has to be a little sick to say that someone 
must be proud of the dead at their funeral.   One talked about 
pride at happy occasions, when your mother wins an award or your 
daughter is inducted into an honors society.  Not at a funeral.  
Dying isn’t something to be proud of.  It’s not a great challenge; 
people do it everyday, sometimes in amazingly stupid ways.

	Sympathy was trite.  And even given that, Samantha sat in 
a cold church, on a sunny Wednesday afternoon, in an itchy black 
dress, just to get insincere heaps of it by the bucket load.  She 
even had the additional pleasure of being surrounded by people she 
didn’t like, who, for the most part, didn’t like her either.  

	Being able to say good-bye to someone you had a love-hate 
relationship with is severely overrated.

	And, if she got another cutesy, insincere, annoying Hallmark 
card about her loss, she was going to scream.

- leave seat one –