Elegiac

He ran into her, of all places, at a funeral.  A mutual friend who had been sick, who had fought the good fight and was now laying in state at the base of the altar.  The church was backlit with multiple colors streaming in through pane-glass windows and a quiet cello played lonely in the corner.  He had arrived late, a very unusual thing, but he slipped in after the formal portion and into a quiet period of the service.  Which meant everybody turned around.

He kept his head down, a little embarrassed, but not before he imagined her gaze falling upon him as she turned.  Except he wasn’t imagining her…she was there, and in the soft colors of the church, streaming blues and yellows across the pews, her brown eyes were judging. He looked back at her, unwavering.  He wasn’t sure of the protocol so he broke the gaze and in his peripheral vision saw that she turned to face forward once again.

Proximity is an interesting thing…being in the same room with her was always a bit of a moth to the flame.  It was hard to ignore, and frankly it was appealing to feel her eyes upon him.  Like stepping into a bath.  But here, in a church, with a dead body peeling back a layer of emotional veneer it was a little unsettling.  Death is a great aphrodisiac…it is the ultimate backdrop to wanting to feel alive…blood pulsating, heart palpitating, cheek-flushing energy.  Of time twisting and folding away.  Of chances missed, opportunities lost.  He certainly had no regrets, allowing her to visit his space, draw pictures on his inner walls and then move on.  He knew it wasn’t neat, not like some Office Depot aisle.  It was messy, uncalculated; it was battery sparks, flint against rock, fool’s gold.  It burnt sparkler-hot and sparkler fast.  And here, with one dead guy in the room, he wondered if she felt that there was actually two…and he was the other one.

He watched the closing of the casket and the lines of people beginning to stream out.  He got ahead of the crowd and exited into surprisingly bright sunshine and got to his car.  He knew where the burial was and as he turned out of the drive he looked and saw her on the steps of the church.  In his mind she was looking at his car disappear and he wondered if she thought he was disappearing as well.  That perhaps they had only the brief eye-lock in the church. 

 

The slope of the cemetery was slight; it rounded up towards the tombstones with plenty of grass and paths.  Quite a few flowers dotted alongside the gravestones, some real, some fake.  Who puts fake flowers on a grave, he wondered.  He remembered her penchant for fresh cut flowers, her brief enjoyment of their colors and the brief attention she gave them….before tossing them out when they withered.

He didn’t know and he wasn’t sure if she’d attend the graveside service so he focused mostly on the fresh dirt against the grass.  The deep rich brown, disturbed and piled high, like a construction project that would be over in minutes but would last forever.  He listened to the brief prayers and he even laid a rose on the casket, hoping nobody would notice from the grave where he had stolen it.  There had been plenty and he had stolen just one…it made him feel guilty but he also knew the dead would never know. He laid the flower in an open spot on the copper casket, kissed his finger tips and placed them on the metal top and kept moving past the crowd.  He didn’t see her, but then again he wasn’t really looking for her.

He walked past the crowd, down a slight hill to a patch where the military section was in the cemetery.  For some reason he felt safer there, amongst the dead soldiers and sailors; felt their pull and tug and he remembered he had always wanted a military funeral.  Not because of rifles and tri-fold flags…just rather the closure of something he had started and was now done.  He was reading the inscription of a young Captain’s headstone when he heard her behind him.

Looking for flowers to steal?

He stood up and turned to face her.  She had a slight smirk with a tilted head.  She clutched a small purse in front of her.  She hadn’t worn black but rather a very dark blue.  It made her seem prettier.

Nobody’s supposed to know that.  

Well, how else would you explain a rose snapped in half?  

He nodded.  Good observation.

They were about 10 feet apart, a distance he remembered from many times in the past.  Not too close, but close enough.  She looked diminutive in the expanse, but she was like something alive in the field of the dead.  He might have thought of a flower, or a flame, or something breathing and living but the metaphor escaped him.  He didn’t have a word to define her right then.

I saw you in the church.  She had taken a step forward.

Yeah, embarrassed again, he smiled, I was late.  I actually was on time.  But I saw your car and I guess I was determining on whether or not I should go in.

You debated coming in to his funeral because you saw my car?

No.  The logic was I was going to see you.  And I was already feeling shitty.

She looked up a little quickly.  So seeing me would make you feel worse?

I am not sure. Or at least I wasn’t sure.  Just one less thing to deal with I guess.  But seeing you now doesn’t make me feel poorly so I guess my instincts were wrong.

Well how does it make you feel?

He looked around, the scattering of perfectly lined up rows of headstones probably appealing to her sense of neatness and order.

It makes me feel like I’m not dead.

She let out a little laugh.  That is an awesome compliment.

I’ve given you more than enough compliments.  Maybe someday you’ll just have to ultimately believe them…I tried in my time.

She gave him what he called her stone face…unbelievably hard to read.  Completely stoic.  

I’m pretty sure I believed you when you complimented me.

Well, that’s the way I currently feel.  He closed the distance.  I feel like I can imagine words forming in my brain, colors and shapes coming out of my mouth to try to describe to you how it feels.  How you look against all of these shapes and stones, how you create such gravity…how I sense a visceral reaction that I likely would underwhelm you if I tried to describe….so the best way to say it is I don’t feel dead.

And he added…despite your best efforts to make me feel that way.

Her eyes softened.  I wasn’t trying to make you feel that way.

Yeah.  You were.  And it’s okay. I should have sensed that given my bit of chaos that I introduced to you.

She blinked, a bit of hair caught on her eyelashes.  The cemetery was exceptionally quiet…appropriately enough.  Well, what can I say?

He smiled.  Nothing.  The time for talking was then…this is just kinda like the eulogy.

I thought you said you didn’t feel dead.

I said me.  I didn’t say we.

The sun came out from behind a cloud and the afternoon was yellow, dark green at their feet and they were the tallest points for a mile all around.  Finally she spoke.

I don’t think “we” are dead.

He shrugged.  Well, let me just say it feels like a bit of absence.  It feels like a bit of nothing.  It feels like disappearance.  Like somebody walked out of a room in the middle of a dance.  And honestly, I just am glad that with you here in front of me that I can simply admit that.  And not try to nudge you into something that is untenable.  Or worse.  Something undesirable.

She shook her head in a slight back and forth…a negative.  A disagreement.  But she didn’t say anything.  She didn’t reveal any more.  

Somebody called her name from the top of the hill.  She turned to look back and nodded.

Her mouth made the shape of the word bye and she turned and left him, walking past the perfect rows of stone, crisscrossing the perfectly manicured grass and leaving tiny bits of beauty in her wake.