Why are you all here?

‘Why are you all here?’ Pip shouted and looked around the room at the silenced crowd of faces, ‘some of you have never even been to this house!’ tears began to stream down her porcelain cheeks. ‘This is my sisters funeral, not just a day out!’ She pounded her foot on the ground for emphasis.

Lorraine, her aunt who happened to live with her, began to pull on her arm not knowing what was going to come out of the bereft Pips mouth next. Pip resisted, she needed to say her piece.

‘And why am I seeing some of you for the first time since uncle john’s funeral, not seeing you for years before that? Sinead never even made it to johns funeral as she was in hospital so she probably wouldn’t have been able to pick some of you out of a line up. Yet you all feel the need to come and celebrate her life? The life you knew nothing about? Pitiful! Shame on you!’

Pip paused for dramatic effect before she continued, ‘you all should take a leaf out of Lorraine’s book. Now she was there! She brought her to get stitches and visited her in hospital. None of ye did that! Not one of you visited her in hospital! Yea, you sent gifts and cards, but what Sinead really needed was support from her “family”.’ Pip used her fingers to make bunny ears, ‘and a real family member would have visited her once in the seven years she has been in and out of there…. pitiful, just pitiful.’

‘We are supposed to be mourning, and ye are all laughing and joking about a person most of ye knew nothing about! Yes, you knew of her bubbly personality when she was well and how witty she was, but she was only like that for short bursts at a time. What of her did you know when she was sick. You weren’t the ones who had to coax the blade out of her hand when you accidentally walked in on her cutting herself in the bathroom. You knew not of the true struggle she battled through every minute of every day or of the flashbacks that crippled her. And yet here you all are now that she’s dead celebrating a life you knew nothing of. So I ask you again, why are you all here?’