Thursday, September 24, 2009

The first day of the eleventh year

We went to the cemetery yesterday to visit Paul’s grave. We couldn’t find it right away, and my mind jumped to the thought that he wasn’t dead after all and of course it wouldn’t be there.

But that was just a fleeting thought. It was there – right in front of me. It had ants crawling all over it, and I wondered why they had chosen his gravestone and not the others. Could it be that he was so much younger and more succulent than the other dead people around him who all died in their 80s and 90s. Another silly thought because everyone around him had been reduced to ashes as well. All the succulence burned out of every last one of them.

It’s always anticlimactic to go to the cemetery. I worry over it, I think about it for days before, and then once I’m there, I lay down a stone, touch it, brush away a bit of the dust, shed a tear or two, and then we go. We spend maybe five minutes in all, and we drive away.

Writing poems about him seems more productive. Here is yesterday's tweet.

139
The color purple
Cat Stevens
Zen parables
Dungeons and Dragons
teeny trains
Mr. Rogers
Legos
fishing
formed his young years
until music took over.

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