terrypetersen

May my silences become more accurate. (Theodore Roethke, poet (1908-1963)

My husband leads me along a winding, unmarked road in the cemetery—I trust him to direct us out again. There were color-coded lines along the middle before the roads were freshly oiled. Now, I depend upon Jay’s sense of direction. For me north, south, east, and west could just as easily be called here, there, nowhere, and the dark side of the moon.

“How do you know which way is north. . . or west?”

He shrugs, smiles, and looks ahead. His map is innate. Perhaps he understands his place on the globe the way I intuit a new recipe.

We celebrate an unusually cool breeze at the end of July and read the names on the tombstones. I see my maiden surname. I don’t know if these people were related to me or not. The lush rolling hills are covered with angelic shapes, traditional tombs, and huge monuments chosen to stand out, to hover over the others. Yet, we don’t stop to honor the grand and the glorious. The persons buried there are just as dead as the ones under the flat, almost lost markers in center plots: mother, father, or beloved son gone too soon. I consider those lives. Who were they? Who am I to those I meet?

Wasps abound in the grass. They hover over the dates on the tombstones: born this date, died another. Real life includes plenty of unavoidable stings. I just don’t want to be the one who wields thoughtless ones during anyone’s “dash” time on this planet.

I take Jay’s hand. I’m not wearing a watch. My at-home agenda will wait as the silence absorbs me, and we trudge up a gravel hill into the afternoon sun.