Memories

My new internship brought me to Austin, a quaint town in Texas that somehow feels more like a sleepy Midwestern postcard than a booming city. I’ve got to say, there isn’t much to do here beyond a few lazy bars scattered around town. But Austin has this strange charm: you can take a slow, aimless stroll down a street and somehow end the day with the same satisfaction you might get from a packed, adventurous city tour in New York.

My house happens to overlook an ancient graveyard, where many humans who once graced this soil now rest nourshing it, a selfless act. That view, combined with my recent encounter with Orwell’s 1984, made me want to pay homage to the past in whatever small way I could, to explore what this thing we call “the past” really is, and perhaps, through it, the idea of death: its role and its meaning.

I sat by the window in our dining room, overlooking the graveyard, and thought to myself: if I happened to run into the gravekeeper, and if we happened to strike up a conversation, what would he say?

I imagine it would go something like this, in a Morgan Freeman-esque voice:

There are some days, not often, when I really hate what I do. Especially when someone who had no place or time to be here finds themselves seeking shelter in the soil. On days like that, I feel angry. I blame the world for being unjust. But then I convince myself that perhaps it is unjust, and perhaps that is why they chose to find a better place.

Most days, though, I love my job. Especially when I see someone standing by a tombstone, conversing, confessing, weeping.

To you and me, it may be just a piece of stone, with words engraved on it that mean nothing to us. But to them, that stone is a piece of memory. A symbol of joy and pain that once filled their life. They behave as if the stone is living.

Funny thing, memory.

When the stone was cut out of a larger rock, it was still a stone. When the name was chiseled into it, it was still a stone. When it was loaded onto a truck, it was still a stone. But the moment it was placed into the ground, it came alive.

It had a life. It became a memory.

There is also a sense of finality to it, like death. The stone wont move an inch for years to come, nor what it represents changes, a finality, like death. It will see very many tears, just like death.

Do you see how it is starting to be more human and less stone?

I love my job because I get to see life after death. A gift, perhaps, that many people wish they did see.

It comforts me to know that even if I do not have someone to cry for me, if I lie close enough to someone who does, maybe the wind will carry a tear or two my way as well. Eventually the stone, worn out by time, will feed into the soil again, like the dead. Maybe it is alive.

There isnt a lot of space left in this grave so we will have to live close by. Funny how I said live and not die.

Maybe there is life after death.