The Cemetery

Gravel crunched beneath his feet. The chain-link fence squeaked as he pushed the gate open far enough to squeeze his Toyota through. He turned and walked back to his car with eight crunches. He sat inside and pulled the door almost shut without the satisfying click. He reached his hand to his left shoulder for his seatbelt, but he paused and settled both hands on the steering wheel. He inched forward. He parked the car on the east side, even though she was on the far west. Out of habit, he pressed the release on his seatbelt, turned the key, and took it out of the ignition. A permanent marker rested in the cupholder along with some nickels, pennies and a pack of gum. He picked it all up and slipped it into the front pocket of his khaki pants. He put the key ring in the cupholder.

He pushed the door open with his fingertips. He slipped out of the vehicle and shut the door without a sound. He looked around him, and his eyes fell on a nearby Rogers family headstone. He knew their son Chris, vaguely, from high school. Mr. Rogers was deceased, but Mrs. Rogers’ birthday was etched without an expiration date. Her life was branded and defined by numbers, yet incomplete.

Grass was a little less green above the body of Mr. Rogers. The ground lay undisturbed to the right of him. It waited for Mrs. Rogers. The marble tombstone was a sculpture unfinished. The wife’s undetermined death date was a ghost more troubled than the husband.

Their birthdays were only months apart: April and November. She was older, but he died first. The men always die first.

He turned away from Mr. Rogers. He headed north. His eyes scanned the letters and numbers that in a certain order spelled dead people and death dates and birthdays no one celebrated.

It was April 22, 2010.

It was her birthday.

It would have been her birthday, but it became a day he visited a slab of marble on a patch of newly planted grass.

He wandered the perimeter of the land, where the numbers got smaller and the letters got less familiar. His feet led him to a dark gray stone, which read, “Connolly,” in decayed and weathered letters. He was a frequent visitor of Mr. and Mrs. Connolly. They were the oldest people beneath his feet, with birthdays reaching pack to 1889. They were also the only couple with the woman’s date etched in first. Mr. Connolly died a day after his wife.

These numbers fascinated him. He imagined how the couple died. Perhaps the wife died of an illness, and the husband caught it, dying only a short day later. Maybe the wife died in an accident, and the husband died of heartbreak. He had heard of that happening. Or perhaps she passed in her sleep, and the husband couldn’t bear the loss and killed himself to join her.

His mind lingered on the idea that the husband killed himself to be with his wife. He killed himself because he couldn’t be alone on this earth without a hand to hold. He took his own life, because he knew it should have been him.

The men always die first.

December 13, 2007.

He kicked a small gray rock with the tip of his brown loafers. He stepped back and crunched a pinecone beneath the sole.

He imagined Mrs. Connolly’s red hair, perhaps curly. Beloved wife and daughter. She never had kids of her own, but perhaps she always wanted to. She wore a yellow apron and a white smile. She leaned her cheek towards her husband. Mr. Connolly kissed her before he walked out the door, and she stirred cake batter with a wooden spoon. She carried the blue bowl to the kitchen window. She watched her husband back the Ford out of the driveway, switch gears, and head down the road. She leaned against the sink and set the bowl onto the tile counter with a clunk. She pulled her red hair out of her eyes, and she pulled the beige curtains shut on the window.

He wondered how she died. He wondered if it hurt Mr. Connolly so much that he took his own life to cure the pain. He wondered why Mr. Connolly didn’t die first. He wondered why he didn’t die first.

December 13, 2007.

He took a few clumsy steps backwards and settled onto a bench on the edge of the grounds. He closed his eyes and listened to the whistle of a bird. He closed his eyes and could see hers. Blue, like his, but brighter, with specks of gold that brightened in the sun. She smiled and sat down beside him. The wind danced with her dark red hair. She held his hand. A single tear splashed his palm. He opened his eyes. He was alone; his hand only held a tear.

The bird continued to whistle.

There was a knot in the wood on the bench. It was soggy and darker than the rest of the bench. Rain and snow had eroded the surface, and insects and maggots had eaten through the center. He stuck his finger into the hole, and felt the air beneath his seat. He scraped a slice away from the bottom. The layer of stain had separated from the wood. He peeled off another piece from the top of the bench, wondering how big of a piece he could get before it snapped.

He heard the footsteps before he saw the legs they belonged to. Feet thumped on the heavy sod, and the sound traveled to his bench in the lonely graveyard.

They were only a few rows in front of him. An old woman clutched the arm of a younger one. The young woman held a bouquet of pink and purple tulips. They stopped in front of a sheer black stone, shaped like a bench. He had seen it before. It stood out from the other stones, and it read, “Sit here and remember with me.”

The old woman slowly lowered herself onto the bench, her back to him. The younger woman removed the tulips from the wrapping and laid them in front of the stone. The old woman wore a silk scarf around her head, and with a trembling hand, she reached back to tighten it.

“Let me help you,” the younger one said. She fixed the scarf.

“Thank you, miss.”

“How are you feeling?” The young woman asked as she sat down on the bench.

“I miss him.”

“I know, ma’am, but that’s not what I meant. Are you still feeling feverish?”

“Oh, yes. No, no, I’m fine.”

“Good.”

The old woman lifted her hand again and held her palm against her cheek. Her hand looked like she had taken a long bath. She had thin, wrinkled fingers. She seemed fragile.

“It would have been our eightieth anniversary today,” she said.

“Wow, that’s a long time.”

“Yes. Yes, it is a long time. He spent his entire life with me.” Her hand nudged the frame of her glasses, and then dropped to her lap, out of view.

“You know? His entire life,” she said again.

The young woman nodded.

“And I’ll spend the rest of mine wishing he were here.”

The man closed his eyes again.

The men always die first.

He leaned forward and put his face in hands. His elbows rested on his knees, and his feet pointed towards each other on the ground. He rocked back and forth. The bird lowered its voice. He heard her singing, a sweet, low song.

His mouth opened like a grin, but air passed through in shaky breaths. She loved to sing. He gasped. He clenched his teeth together and squeezed his eyes shut. The outside corners wrinkled and the inside corners filled with tears. A whimper escaped his lips and the sound went through his clamped jaw.

He heard the older woman speak again.

“Oh, that poor man. I wonder who he lost. Not his wife, I hope. He’s so young. I wouldn’t wish that pain on anyone.”

“No,” the young woman said.

“I just wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”

His fingers parted and his eyes opened. Through the spaces between his knuckles, he saw a dandelion. He looked up at the back of women’s heads.

“See, I thought I’d be prepared for this, since we were getting so old,” the old woman said. “I knew we’d die. I knew it’d happen. It was bound to happen, especially at this age. I just didn’t think he’d die before me. I didn’t think I’d die before him, either. I guess I always kind of thought we’d die together. We fell in love together, and we married together. We lived together, and we traveled together. Why wouldn’t we die together? I mean, why not?”

“I don’t know.”

“Of course not. I didn’t know, either. I just didn’t know. I didn’t think I’d have to do this on my own.”

The old woman sighed.

“People aren’t prepared to be alone. It’s especially hard to be alone on your own.”

“Well, men have a lower life expectancy,” the young woman said. “But that doesn’t make it any easier.”

“No, it doesn’t make it any easier. No, it does not.”

They sat together for a quarter of an hour. He watched the back of their heads. The old woman’s scarf slipped down an inch every so often. The young woman itched her scalp a couple times. She twirled her earrings. She checked her watch.

She stood up abruptly.

“Well, since I’m here, I think I’ll say hello to my great-aunt. She’s just over there, by the oak.” The young woman pointed.

The older woman nodded.

The younger one walked away.

“It’s hard, baby,” the old woman whispered. “This Earth is a little less beautiful without you here. It’s hard.”

“It’s hard, isn’t it?” she asked loudly.

The young woman turned back to look.

The old woman pushed herself to her feet, one hand on the stone, the other on her left hip. She bent over, picked up a pink tulip, and kissed the top of the stone, on the left side, where the dates were all filled in. She straightened her back and closed her eyes. The wind blew the scarf off her gray hair, but it remained tied around her neck. She opened one eye and looked at the man. He was watching her. She smiled without parting her lips.

She walked to him, slowly, with more purpose on her right foot. Her left slid along. She held her hip and her flower.

When she approached him, she reached for his hands. She held them both for a moment, still wet from his tears. Her hands were soft, unlike the prune he imagined. She gave him the flower and wrapped his fingers around the stem.

Without a word, she turned and walked away, her right foot pounding the ground. The young woman hurried to her side and supported her with an arm around her waist.

The man stroked the pale petals of the tulip. Two long leaves hugged the stem.

The bird continued to whistle.

He got to his feet and brought the flower to his nose. It was fresh, but not his favorite. They both preferred roses. They had a rose bush, and he continued to care for it, although she had the greener thumb. He stepped forward, to the Connolly grave. He laid the flower across the top of the dark gray stone. The stone was worn and chipped. It had history in the cemetery. Mr. and Mrs. Connolly had lied beneath the stone longer than anyone else there. They had lied together for years.

He left the stone with its numbers and letters, and he left the couple with their flower. He ran down the beaten path to the other end of the cemetery, where she lied.

Breathless and lonely, he knelt at her stone. His name alarmed him, like it usually did. He wondered if he had died, then reminded himself of where he sat. Her name hurt worse, followed by some heart-wrenching numbers.

It was a small stone. Their shared name spread across the top, with their individual names etched on the bottom. He wrapped his hands around the stone from each side. His knuckles were as white as the marble they gripped. Her side of the grass was short and still had bald patches. His side blended in with the rest of the earth.

The wind had picked up. Leaves were pulled off the branches and thrown to the ground. They danced across the uneven grass.

He let go of the stone and slid off his knees, onto his stomach. He lied flat on the ground. Something poked his thigh. He pulled a permanent marker out of his pocket.

He looked at the empty space beneath his birthday. Someday it would be covered with numbers meaningless to him.

“I wouldn’t wish this pain on anyone,” he whispered. “Especially you.”

He took off the cap and reached towards the marble.

“I died that day with you.”

He scrawled a twelve, and then a thirteen, and then a two thousand and seven.