Angel Lily

People have always said my mother was magical. I never truly believed them until her funeral. 
It was sprinkling. A cacophony of crows was sounding, their outcry echoing across the still water of the lake she chose for her ashes to be scattered. Johnny, my poor young nephew, oblivious to the occasion, wanted nothing more than to splash around in the water, but his mother, my twin sister Iris, held him back. 
The reverend was droning on, his words overlapping and mixing in my mind. It was hardly a surprise when my youngest brother, Philip, sneaked his way over to my side, and nudged me with his elbow. 
He leaned forward and whispered to me, “Lily never would have wanted a funeral this boring.” He has an uncanny inclination to calling our mother by her first name. 
I scoffed at his insensitivity, despite the truth behind his statement. Our mother was always the liveliest person in the room; a day with her was like a day with a shooting star. I had missed her terribly in the two months she’d been gone. The night sky is always darker with one less star, however significant.
“No,” I sighed. “No, she would not have.”
When the priest finished his sermon, a lone violinist came to the waterfront and started a somber melody, pulling the bow in time with the small tide of the lake. My eldest brother, James, and his son, Ben, got inside a canoe, and started paddling. The urn that carried my mother was set in between them. 
“Mommy, I’m cold,” Johnny whined. Iris just patted his shoulder reassuringly as Philip laughed under his breath. 
By the time James and Ben had reached the middle of the lake, we were all soaked through and cold to the bone. The music went lower and solemn, the wind picking it up and carrying it across the entire vigil. The two men lifted the urn and began the process of returning my mother to the Earth.
It was at this point that the supernatural occurred. 
The entire lake started to ripple, shaking the canoe and causing my brother and nephew to frantically paddle back to shore. The rain stopped abruptly, the clouds parting too fast to be ordinary. The wind that had been gently moving a moment ago returned forcefully, blowing our hair and clothes as if they were laundry out on the line. 
And despite being a hundred meters from the forest line, with no flowering plants nearby, a thousand pink lilies drifted down from the sky, carried like angels descending from heaven, or dancers from a stage. They settled wherever they pleased: in the water, on the sand, on Johnny’s head. There was a tang in the air, one that smelled like the minimal perfume my mother wore.
With the sun shining bright upon us, we were all reminded of what people always told us; our mother was magical. 
Astounded, Philip muttered, “Now this is a funeral worthy of Mom.”
I couldn’t agree more.