Sunday, March 01, 2009

one sunday afternoon.


in brown shorts, an old tennis t-shirt, and $5 shoes from rite aid, i sat on the grass. the weather was beautiful -- the type of weather that made you finish your homework fast when you were little so you could go outside and play all day. my mother sat in front of me , my sister on the other side of the grave to my left, and my dad standing above us all, looking down. you'd think that going to the cemetery would be a solemn occasion, but it never is.

i look around at the beautiful people sitting on the grass with me: a mother so strong and loving, a sister so intelligent and admirable, and a father so hardworking and loyal. i listen as we all talk about the future ahead, of how i'm graduating high school soon, how my sister is looking for her first designing job, and how i'm finally looking for a job of my own. the future seems so bright knowing that the people that surround me will always be there.

then i look around at everyone else coming into the cemetery. the young and the old, the sad and the happy, the wife and the husband, the son, the daughter, the niece and nephew, the best friend and the fiance; all have loved and lost. but whether they come with family and friends, or come alone, i see that almost all of them have smiles on their faces. smiles because they get to visit their loved ones once again, knowing they have not really lost them at all.

as we drive away, i pass the sight of so many more people. so many more graves with beautiful flowers strewn upon them and balloons flying high with a "happy birthday" or an "i love you" written on them. but a certain person catches my eye: it is an old man sitting comfortably in a lawn chair with an umbrella over him, talking to the grave he was sitting at. i ventured a guess at what he was talking about and thought maybe he was talking to his wife about something as simple as the on-goings of his day. or his daughter, telling her he bought a new dog and named it after her favorite teddy bear. or maybe his son and explaining how he finally finished sanding the cabinet he had been working on for so long. whatever it was, it made me wish that one day someone will love me that much to come and visit me and tell me how their day went, as if i had never left at all.

the cemetery is a beautiful place.

1 comment:

ms. tara said...

oh athena, how I have missed your blogs. thank you for writing again. and thank you for always being so optimistic about even the darkest places.