You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

by Sherman Alexie

I was completely shocked to see that Donny’s immediate family—little brother, mother, father, and grandparents—were sitting off to the side behind a black mesh screen. I could barely make out their features. They were grieving separately from the rest of us. I was boggled. How do people grieve if they’re not grieving with the entire community? How do they grieve in a separate room? I didn’t doubt the epic size of their pain. I didn’t judge the quality of their grief. I was simply baffled by their ceremonies. That was the first time I truly understood that I was a foreigner. I might have been indigenous to the land itself, but I was a first-generation cultural immigrant to the United States. I was now living in a place where people did not grieve like me. Later, back at school, I was even more shocked to learn that it was the first funeral that most of my classmates had ever attended. Donny Piper was their first death. I thought they were kidding. But, no, it was true. My white classmates knew very little about death. We didn’t keep a tally, but based on the stories I remember from that day, I think I might have attended more funerals than all of my white classmates put together.