[Originally published November 6th, 2016. S.R.]
I’m not alone at Cemetery Ridge this morning. There’s a thirty-year-old man here with what appears to be his ten-year-old daughter.
She lays a bouquet of bright yellow roses on a grave. As gray as the morning is, they stand out all the more. The only other color is the girl’s deep red coat.
He puts his hand on her shoulder, as she begins to cry, uncontrollably. He puts his arm all the way around her, as she sinks to her knees, and he follows.
I can’t stare at them anymore, it feels indecent. Instead I wander on from where I was visiting (my father-in-law’s grave) to some of the other friends we’ve lost these last years. One grave, a particular woman who I knew as a singer, is over where the trees grow thorny and wild. The gray and desolate morning only makes the trees look wilder.
This cemetery has a name, of course, but for as long as I can remember, people have called it “Cemetery Ridge”. This hill slopes down on the other side of the trees, and I can see the gray town in the distance. I visit this grave, and then two others, finally heading back to my car.
In the parking lot, I see the man and his daughter approaching their car. To my surprise, there is a woman wearing sunglasses waiting for them within it. I had assumed from what I saw that the man had lost his wife and the girl her mother; but, apparently not, as the woman has obviously been crying in the car. She’s holding a sort of shapeless stuffed animal.
Oh my God, she lost a child. The little girl lost a sibling: a sister, maybe, or a brother.
Now, my eyes are filling with tears. At that exact moment, just as the man finishes helping his daughter into the car and the arms of her mother, he turns and sees me, tears streaming down my face; and I could tell, in that brief moment, that he was concerned about me, and whatever grief might have brought me to this place.
His grief was my grief. My grief was his grief.
They leave within moments, driving slowly away. I stand by my car as a gray wind blows across the ridge, moving the leafless trees.
For Nano Poblano this year, I’m trying a prose post a day instead of my usual work in poetry. Thanks for reading. – S.B.
I know the feelings of being at a cemetery, grieving, and encountering the grief of others. I don’t have cemeteries to visit here but when I go home to California, there are several that draw me to them; several where I am overcome by grief, mine and that of others.
Excellent post.
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That’s so weird… I just wrote a food bank piece today. It doesn’t post until next Saturday.
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No, because after you wrote about it before, I to,d myself to write some time about my experience with one. What’s new is me volunteering at one.
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Wonderfully touching post
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Beautiful.
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Wow…that was so beautiful..even though it was sad..and the whole scenery…seemed to be one with the feeling of grief felt by all there.
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I’ve relived that morning many times. It was overwhelming.
I couldn’t imagine what it must have been (and still be) like for them.
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Neither can I..but I don’t have kids either. I’ve been in the presence of parents who have lost their children though, working in the hospital..and I would always tear up when I had to be the bearer of such news to them.
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Wow. That has to be a really hard thing to do.
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Yes..it is. Sometimes I feel that when we are exposed to it more than the “usual”…we as doctors or nurses..may seem “cold”. But, it’s more of a safety thing? For our own sanity, in a way..if that makes sense?
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It does.
I volunteered for a suicide crisis line for a time, and you either compartmentalize or snap. It’s not that you aren’t sympathetic, it’s just, we can all only handle so much.
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Yes, exactly 🙂
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