When I was still in elementary school, my mom worked during the summers. We had this tiny pup tent that we kept in the basement, it was blue, red, and yellow and I could carry it under my arm like a book, though when folded out it was big enough for me to sit in comfortably.
At the top of my neighborhood near the street, adjacent to a cemetery, I was sitting in the blue red and yellow tent when my cat ran away. She didn't get very far because she hates to be outside, but she ran into the cemetery, and I chased her. I found her, brought her home, and was careful not to let go of her when I inevitably brought her back outside with me again.
For someone who has for most of my life lived in the same house, in the same neighborhood, adjacent to the same cemetery, I have very seldom considered death. Cemeteries are kind of a funny place anyway, if you think about it. They're all about death, but in a way that doesn't really acknowledge death for what it is. I read this book recently, and in certain cultures, it's considered more ghastly to put dead loved ones in the ground and cover them with dirt than it is to eat them.
I thought about death when my grandfather died, and when my dog died, and when my mom called me, breathless, a few months ago, when my cat lay dying in a cardboard box in our living room. Sometimes I consider cancer, and sickness, and I think about the ways that people have always disappeared around me, even when I didn't know them, couldn't be moved by their passing. But they died anyway, unbeknownst to me. And when I look around a cemetery, especially the cemetery adjacent to my house, I don't necessarily think about all the bodies and all the funerals and all the dying. I think about the people, as they must have been before.
You know that feeling when you suddenly realize that all the people around you live completely separate lives that have nothing to do with you? You'll be sitting on the train or the bus or something, and you'll see someone, or a group of people, and you'll realize that these people have insecurities and strengths and relationship histories, and you don't know about them, and you probably never will. I think the word for this feeling is sonder. I have a hard time remembering times when I've felt that for living, breathing people around me, but when I think about the cemetery adjacent to my neighborhood, I think about all the separate lives of the buried people in it. I haven't seen anyone visiting that cemetery very much, but I know the people exist, they're out there somewhere. Under all the flowers and gravestones, there are people that were buried there by other people.
I think a lot of people who go to grave sites to visit deceased loved ones go there because they don't feel like they said a good enough goodbye to the person when they were alive. Funerals aren't for the dead, they're for the living, or so that's what I've been told. So too must cemeteries be for the living, and not for the dead. When can you really mark that someone's body is no longer their body, at least not in the same sense, if you don't have some sort of marker, a gravestone or a memorial or something? Cemeteries are ways to preserve relationships soured by an unspecial goodbye. Who's ever really ready to say goodbye anyway, right? And when things that you aren't ready for happen anyway, of course they don't feel exactly right. In this life, there are many things that aren't special, and goodbyes are just another one of those things.
My grandmother has told my cousins and me before that she and my grandfather have already picked out grave plots in the cemetery adjacent to my house. I can't say that in that moment I have taken her words seriously for what they are. But I guess my grandmother is right to consider that one day she and my grandfather will lie next to each other in plots in the ground, under flowers, and gravestones. I guess one day I'll be forced to understand that two people in my life, who I have spent 22 years understanding as fixed points, will become a different kind of point to fixate on.
At the top of my neighborhood near the street, adjacent to a cemetery, I was sitting in the blue red and yellow tent when my cat ran away. She didn't get very far because she hates to be outside, but she ran into the cemetery, and I chased her. I found her, brought her home, and was careful not to let go of her when I inevitably brought her back outside with me again.
For someone who has for most of my life lived in the same house, in the same neighborhood, adjacent to the same cemetery, I have very seldom considered death. Cemeteries are kind of a funny place anyway, if you think about it. They're all about death, but in a way that doesn't really acknowledge death for what it is. I read this book recently, and in certain cultures, it's considered more ghastly to put dead loved ones in the ground and cover them with dirt than it is to eat them.
I thought about death when my grandfather died, and when my dog died, and when my mom called me, breathless, a few months ago, when my cat lay dying in a cardboard box in our living room. Sometimes I consider cancer, and sickness, and I think about the ways that people have always disappeared around me, even when I didn't know them, couldn't be moved by their passing. But they died anyway, unbeknownst to me. And when I look around a cemetery, especially the cemetery adjacent to my house, I don't necessarily think about all the bodies and all the funerals and all the dying. I think about the people, as they must have been before.
You know that feeling when you suddenly realize that all the people around you live completely separate lives that have nothing to do with you? You'll be sitting on the train or the bus or something, and you'll see someone, or a group of people, and you'll realize that these people have insecurities and strengths and relationship histories, and you don't know about them, and you probably never will. I think the word for this feeling is sonder. I have a hard time remembering times when I've felt that for living, breathing people around me, but when I think about the cemetery adjacent to my neighborhood, I think about all the separate lives of the buried people in it. I haven't seen anyone visiting that cemetery very much, but I know the people exist, they're out there somewhere. Under all the flowers and gravestones, there are people that were buried there by other people.
I think a lot of people who go to grave sites to visit deceased loved ones go there because they don't feel like they said a good enough goodbye to the person when they were alive. Funerals aren't for the dead, they're for the living, or so that's what I've been told. So too must cemeteries be for the living, and not for the dead. When can you really mark that someone's body is no longer their body, at least not in the same sense, if you don't have some sort of marker, a gravestone or a memorial or something? Cemeteries are ways to preserve relationships soured by an unspecial goodbye. Who's ever really ready to say goodbye anyway, right? And when things that you aren't ready for happen anyway, of course they don't feel exactly right. In this life, there are many things that aren't special, and goodbyes are just another one of those things.
My grandmother has told my cousins and me before that she and my grandfather have already picked out grave plots in the cemetery adjacent to my house. I can't say that in that moment I have taken her words seriously for what they are. But I guess my grandmother is right to consider that one day she and my grandfather will lie next to each other in plots in the ground, under flowers, and gravestones. I guess one day I'll be forced to understand that two people in my life, who I have spent 22 years understanding as fixed points, will become a different kind of point to fixate on.
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