Free Losing Her by Mariah Dietz

have gained brain function again. But when it’s someone you care about, someone you love, how do you give up?
    Classical music seeps through the speakers that are hidden precariously throughout the room as I anxiously glance around for Ace or Kyle. I finally notice her tucked under Pedro’s arm. She looks like a stranger to me. She’s lost weight and you can tell she hasn’t been sleeping from the deep purple shadows etched under her eyes. Seeing her like this guts me, and seeing her accept comfort from Pedro just makes the pain that much more pronounced.
    The pastor that has been visiting the house regularly, making arrangements for this moment, stands at the small podium and says a quick greeting, queuing people to take a seat. I walk to the front where the rest of the Bosse family congregates, now missing two key members, David and Ace, and filled with several that I’ve recently been introduced to. I take a seat next to Kendall, who immediately reaches over and grasps my hand tightly in hers.
    The girls had decided to each do a piece of the eulogy. Kendall had mentioned to me that the four of them worked separately on the message they wanted to share but had come together numerous times to ensure that the entire message flowed. Ace was never around when they did; she’d been absent a lot, and when she wasn’t physically gone, she was mentally.
    They give their eulogies in order of their ages beginning with Mindi. She looks composed and rigid as she begins reading from a paper that she grips so tightly I expect it to tear. Her voice hitches a few times and a few tears roll down her cheeks, but she makes it back to Kyle, who’s waiting with open arms, before she loses it.
    Savannah’s next. She’s crying before she reaches the podium. I can tell it’s not only David’s loss that’s hurting the sisters today; seeing the pain havocking each other makes this even more heart wrenching for each of them.
    Savannah cries, sniffs, and gasps through most of her eulogy, making it damn near impossible to understand, but the raw emotion can be understood by anyone. You don’t need to hear her words to understand the message.
    Jenny’s next. She’s weepy and makes no attempt at hiding it as she smiles the first Bosse smile I’ve seen in a few weeks, and a mixture of guilt and pain grip me.
    Before Kendall stands up, she squeezes my hand hard then lifts her chin and walks to the front of the room.
    “Our dad had a heart of gold. Our grandma would tease that it was the Puerto Rican in him, that the French was where he got his good manners and sense of discipline.” She pauses and smiles a little as tears trickle down her cheeks. “He protected us from a myriad of things. Sometimes it was something small, like never giving me cauliflower because he knew I didn’t like it, to making sure he walked us to the bus stop every morning. He didn’t just walk us, though. He stood there and waited, because that was our dad. He would never allow anything to harm one of us.
    “Our dad was a ladies’ man.” She pauses again, and giggles circulate the room with quiet, muffled tears. “I mean that quite literally, being that he lived in a house with six women. He knew more about fashion and dating than probably ten men combined, but he never complained. He endured and battled monsters in our closets, fights over hair brushes and makeup, and watched every chick flick ever made, not because we forced him to … well except for the time we watched a marathon of Pretty Woman —that one we may have forced upon him—but it was because he was the most loving and selfless man. Our dad was an amazing man. He spent his life helping others and protecting everyone in varying degrees.
    “He had the innate ability to see the best in everyone and everything. Things that some people saw as flaws, he saw as their unique differences, and he was never shy about telling people how special they were, or how great something was. He took the time