The Green Green Grass

  I took one of my cemetery walks the other day, and for the first time, I felt sad. Not just the usual melancholy, which I often feel on my strolls among the dead. That feels ok; it's a melancholy that's mixed with gratitude and mystery.  No, this was glistening eyes aching chest sad.

  It was a sunny morning; the tombstones had hard edges, and threw crisp shadows onto the grass. Young men in bright yellow vests rode their stand-up mowers with abandon through the rows of markers. Contemplating the green expanse, cut through by paths and roads, I felt the beat of my heart and the pulses of my muscles and the songs of the birds. Way at the top of the hill, at the far boundary of the cemetery, I could see two parked cars, and the canopy put up to shade the arriving mourners. I couldn't see the sharp dark rectangle I knew was up there waiting for the guest of honor.

   I followed a path past the big iron BPOE elk, thinking of the ways that people used to belong to each other that they don't anymore. I calculated ages at death as I always do, and compared them to my husband's age, and my mom's. I mourned for the women who lived decades after their husbands had gone on, and all the people who were buried alone, although they were not complaining.  

My path sloped upward to an area stamped with plaques that seemed to anchor the bodies beneath them. All the facts and passions that belonged to those absent people, all their jokes and resentments, were all now underneath this unforgiving ground. I gave myself a little push, taking a fast climb up to a shady bench, arriving a little breathless, trying to capture a  pair of crows flying over the rows of graves to take a trite, but still dramatic, ominous picture. A death lite picture.  I didn't make it in time.

  At some point the light death that we know about from trite photos and crime shows and gaudily-decorated skulls turns into something heavy, turns into gravity itself. Every once in a while I know this.

  

And that's why I was sad. Although my husband and I are in good health, I had gone into the office, on my way in; the office of Piedmont Funeral Services. They were friendly and welcoming, and let me use their bathroom. I looked at their brochure with its century-old sepia portraits of business and arts leaders, now buried nearby, photos of sun shining through flowers, and wisps of wistful poems about death and disappearance that seemed much too personal. That's when I felt the teardrops creeping up into the corners of my eyes. I swallowed and asked about making an appointment to discuss options. Knowing that the option of staying here with the alive people would not be one of the points of discussion. Knowing that when I came back with my husband it would not be like planning a wedding or a vacation.

Part II: 

The Pre-assessment