The Power of the Grave

October 25, 2015

It's been a rough few days. The enormity of some of it hits me in fits and starts. During one of the fits, I decided to head to the cemetery to visit my peeps. A cemetery is one of the few places where it's acceptable to cry in public or stare at the ground wordlessly, uninterrupted. 

So I did that for a bit.

Then I tooled around with appropriately melancholy piano melodies floating through the air. What surprised me was that my mood was unexpectedly lifted by the gravestones in my midst. I first drove by the adjacent marble slabs honoring the deceased "Cockings" and "Breesawitz." I laughed out loud. I was concurrently enjoying a text exchange with a dear friend who has been part of the roller coaster of my recent days. I shared with him the surnames of the dearly departed by which I was so amused. His response was this:  

You wonder how many times their eharmony profile was skipped over due to having an untakable last name.

I laughed again.

I rolled on to see another grave decorated with a scarecrow. I did a double-take. Then I started scanning for jack o' lanterns or snaggle-toothed witches on brooms. Tis the season...but a scarecrow straddling a gravestone? Hey, whatever works.

I made my way to the west side of the grounds and stumbled onto the dual-gravesite designated for the husband of a saintly lady I used to work with and her husband. He passed away five years ago, but she is still going strong. Their full color pictures, however, are part of the face of the gravestone. SHE IS ALIVE. But when she visits Larry, she sees her OWN PICTURE ON HER OWN GRAVESTONE. It's too much. It's just too damned much.

On my way out, a sketchy-looking guy on a 3-speed bike made his way diagonally across a patch of graves. On top of the graves. I took that as a sign it was time to go.

As I soldier on through my current reality, these two little guides that follow seem equally apropos. That's the nature of the beast: laughter in a cemetery. Life goes on...even if you sometimes have to fake it to make it.

And I also like this, although this has no relevance to this post. It just makes me laugh:

I do know this:  I'm vertical, I'm above ground. One of the dearest people I've ever known always reminded me that's the most important thing. And so it is.