piece #1
I remember having walked through this cemetery everyday on my way to school. Classmates would raise their eyebrows at me, but I always found it a nice, peaceful walk. I liked the little patches of clover here and there, and the way the flat leaves all pointed at the sun with the same angle giving them a terraced look. I even found a four leafed clover once or twice among the gravestones. In the early morning a heavy fog moseyed through the trees surrounding the cemetery which lent them an enticing mysticism. It was peaceful and lovely because this cemetery had always just been a place like any other; it was like the beach, coffee shop or park, a place where people went sometimes. Not until right then, as I stood over my mother’s brand new final resting place, did it occur to me it was a place completely unlike any other. Exceptional in its oddness, this place was as beautiful as it was full of sadness, loneliness and decay. It was also then when I noticed how the poison oak, just turning crimson for the long autumn ahead, surrounded the grassy hill and looked suspiciously like a ring of fire.

She had died in a car accident. My step father, James, told me they were arguing over the phone as she was driving home from work. It was one of the three times a year when it really pours rain in southern California, and she just hydroplaned right over a cliff. More than likely she was driving way too fast as she often did when she was irritated. It was the deepest kind of tragedy; one of those stupid thoughtless mistakes that changes absolutely everything in a single moment.

For some reason I have never been able to figure out, James waited a full two days to call and tell me what happened. It was a horribly awkward conversation that’s almost impossible to describe. The closest I can think of is how it might feel if the ground beneath you suddenly disappeared. It’s true that my mom and I were not exactly close, but the idea that my mom had been dead for two days without me knowing gave me an uneasy feeling. Watching James now, with his head in his hands and weeping, I had conflicting feelings of embarrassment and sympathy. He was a bit short and had this unfortunate sort of piggish look about him, but he’d always been kind. James really was a decent man and I was glad my mother found him. Not that I particularly interacted with him much; at 28 I had my own life to worry about. I was glad my mother remarried, but I was too old for a father-daughter dance or any of that crap.

An antsy, persistent anxiety crept into my bones. The funeral was basically over, and what I really wanted to do right then was drop my purse and run full speed out of the cemetery. Not to my car, just out. I would just keep running until I couldn’t anymore. For a second it seemed like a perfectly fine and sane idea, but then I realized I would just have to come back for my car and purse eventually, and what would I say to explain why I’d run off the way I had?

I hadn’t cried the entire time. I knew my mother was buried and never coming back, but there was something about the situation that felt a lot more like I was watching it in a movie than actually living it. In much the same way that a dry river bed is strange, useless and sad, my eyes refused to give a single drop. But then I saw a distant figure standing at the edge of the trees that brought me as close to tears as I could possibly go– my brother, Ivan.