The
cemetery was a scary place as a child.
Tombstones
were symbols of what could never be undone. For a child, they were little more
than reminders of the reality of the bogeyman, staring back in the shape of a
grey rectangle or pentagon. Pastor Frank used to talk about it a lot at the end
of service, usually as he opened the altar for repentance. If we were to die on
the way home, he said, would we be ready for Heaven? Because once we were in
the cemetery, we’d be there forever and ever and ever and ever. A million years
was nothing because in a million years and then some, we’d still be in that
plot off Highway 41.
A
time or two, I went to the altar. That’s not true. I went lots of times. The
reasons weren’t always the same. Sometimes, it was for lies told at school or
being disrespectful to authority. Most of the time, I prayed for my family. My
dad never went to church. He liked beer and screamed in a deafening voice about
so many stupid, ridiculous things. Still, I prayed for him. I prayed for my
siblings. I prayed for my mom in her predicament with a man who could shake
paint on walls with his damned tenor. All the time, people watched me kneel at that altar. After braving the aisle between two hundred souls on either
side, all perched in communion like parakeets in traditional suits, I prayed
while they watched. Even though the pastor said no one looked, that it was just
you and the Lord, most eyes was drawn to the lanky kid with the wayward dad and
bad habit of drawing cartoon puppies during worship. It’s okay, though…I
watched them whenever they went to the altar, too. Every kid knows God hears altar
prayers better than private prayers. I still say so.
Still,
the cemetery bore itself into mind during those altar calls. I knelt before the
prayer bench, knowing I knelt at the same place newlyweds uttered vows and babies
were dedicated. Pastor Frank stood nearby behind the tombstone-shaped podium.
Come
ye and repent, saith the holy banner above him. Repent. Repent. The cemetery awaits. The cemetery is a scary place.
In
the fifteen mile-trip to church, we passed several cemeteries. There was Spring
Hill Cemetery about a mile from our house where the dominant clans of Dividing
Ridge Road were laid to rest, including members of my own family. There was the
big cemetery by the church. Mr. Bill, the one who shot himself when I was five,
was there. Chad was there. Pastor Frank said to be ready, though, regardless of
the cemetery which held us one day, we had to go.
*
Cemeteries became less scary.
At sixteen, me and my younger
brother’s friend Chad died in a car accident. Prom night, he took a curve too
fast. Sixteen years old. It was the first time I encountered death by somebody
I knew well. I remember how different his face looked in the coffin, too. It
wasn’t like old people I’d seen in their coffins at distant relatives’ funerals,
where they always looked familiar, in spite of a plasticizing of the skin. Seeing
Chad, though, was like seeing the woods in my backyard in the summer before I
went to bed and then waking up to see winter time. He was a transfigured being
and it ached my guts into jelly. It still does. I went out to the cemetery to
see him a lot. I still do. Most people don’t know that. The cemetery was a less
scary place after Chad died, though, since someone I knew well was there.
*
Cemeteries became familiar.
More people I knew went there. Among
them was my friend Tiffany, who shot herself while I was away in the Army.
There were all kinds of people buried there. There were old, old people who
lived to be a hundred; there were babies who never saw it past a day, an hour
even; there were people my age; there were veterans who served in every foreign
war since the nineteenth century; there were people married for seventy years
and people who were virgins. There were people who had a verse or poem engraved
and those whose life was defined by their name and two dates. I was always
saddened by the withholding of information, the barer tombstones.
I found great solitude in cemeteries,
too. Whether I knew the burieds or not, I enjoyed the unfamiliarity of names and mysterious ages to which they bore witness. Such things seemed unfair to me. State laws should require a
paragraph for every soul laid to rest, and they damn well should considering
the cost of dying. Regardless, it’s impossible to gauge the measure of a buried’s
existence on account of a fancy etching, so being a little creative is required.
In the cemetery, give the dead the benefit
of the doubt, I say. There is more mystery beneath graveyard acreage than a library. Willard
Buchanan* (1957 – 2006) may have been a wife-beating drunk half his life, or very
well have chronicled the War in Iraq before dying of lung cancer. Janie
McDoogan* (1923 – 1943) may have been a miserable lassie who ran away and joined
a brothel in Memphis, or died of a broken heart after learning her husband was
killed fighting Rommel in North Africa. Joseph Rollins* (1981 – 2013) may have
been in a car wreck, died of leukemia, or shot himself. Cemeteries are where
the undignified are given a plaque in the imagination of the passersby, and where
the accomplished are debased to the level of the meth-head. A journey through
the rows of Gethsemane or the mausoleum is one through the library of the
unwritten.
*
The cemetery became a place of
discovery.
I’ll never forget when I was
visiting my friend Tiffany to be inspired to write a poem about her on the
anniversary of her death when a few tombstones down, I recognized a name. It
was a boy named Dennis I’d known since I was a kid. He’d been dead for nine months. The grass seedlings over
his grave were still fresh in their sprouts and the ground even seemed soft. I
left that day, feeling I owed him a poem. It wasn’t the only time, finding out
one was dead long after the matter. Among other friends waiting for a poem of
remembrance are Amanda, Shawn, Jessica, Justin, and Jason…and those are just the ones from high school, mind you. Not a
social media update, a call, or an email. To visit one years after the matter
is offensive. I guess the lesson was that even in dying, the living have a
propensity to not give a rat’s ass.
*
The
cemetery became the place of listening.
I
go to the cemetery and talk to my loved ones. While they know nothing, this is
not to say they are incapable of listening. Perhaps Ecclesiastes 9:5 (“…the
dead know nothing.”) has reciprocal meaning, and the only reason they know
nothing is because their world is different. Perhaps they’re just better
listeners. Needless to say, it’s quiet there and I go there because I like the
quiet more with each passing year. I hear things there I can nowhere else: the grass,
the breeze even if there isn’t one touching me, and the passage of time. I go
there because I’m rendered deaf in a world where the noise hurts. Even when a eulogy
is being delivered under the tent at a funeral, the surrounding tombstones seem
to glare at those gathered to get on with it and get out. I go there because
the dead, even though they know nothing, still listen. They listen, in all
their deference, to he who strolls above them, as long as he’s minding the
grass where he steps.
*Names and dates are made up
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