....What ended was the possibility of response."
-Joan Didion
****
It's been a while since I went.
Mostly because it's too painful and I don't like the cemetery.
It's around the corner from my house. The *only* thing that's walking distance in the residential area we live in.
This time my youngest sister wanted to tag along. She rode beside me on her pink scooter.
"Whose grave are you visiting, again?"
"My ex-boyfriend"
"Did I ever meet him?"
"Yes, You wouldn't remember him. You were only 3 years old the last time you saw him but he used to make you giggle".
Amber squinted her eyes and stared off into space. I could see she was trying to form a mental image in her mind of his face and was coming up blank.
"What did he look like?"
"Dark brown hair, warm big brown eyes and he was tall. He had a great smile...He was my first love".
"How did he die?"
I didn't answer. I was trying to find the right words to explain but I didn't need to. She remembered.
"But Why?" She asked after a long silence
"I don't know"
"Did you cry alot?"
"yes"
"Do you still miss him?"
"yes"
"Why is that pile of dirt there?"
"It's an open grave...don't get too close to the edge"
"They throw the body in that hole?"
"the body is put in a casket and then lowered into the hole with a machine"
We reached him.
I put a single daisy on his grave and ran my finger over the carved letters of his name. My sister watched in silence.
We walked home together.
During the walk my sister told me about the last sleepover party she went to. Her voice filled with youth, innocence and cheerfulness. "So THEN we found this frog behind the pool! A real frog! It was so small and brown and Andrea said..."
*****
"Seeing death as the end of life is like seeing the horizon as the end of the ocean."
-David Searls
"Death is a challenge. It tells us not to waste time... It tells us to tell each other right now that we love each other."
-Leo F. Buscaglia
