Grave

By Chad W. Lutz

I always run through the cemetery when I’m feeling lonely or blue. Most people would probably say it’s a terrible place to recover emotionally, but I like it. In the spring and summer, there are flowers blossoming and trees budding all over. Even in the winter, with the way the fresh, untouched snow looks laid about the tombstones and mausoleums like sprinkles of sugar. 

I can exhale here. I can feel how I want here, think anything I want. The dead don’t care.

​ Today, it’s cold. Melting slush kicks up off the cemetery drive as I run through the big brick entrance and past its 10ft. cast iron gate. A red Toyota Corolla, some indecipherable year and looking like it might belong in the cemetery itself, scoots past me as I settle into my pace on the graveyard’s main road.

​ No one I know is buried here. The dead are all strangers to me. Strangely, it’s more comforting that way. They don’t know me, I don’t know them. A fair trade: to be left alone and cope with our own feelings.

​ I pass a row of tombstones that look like small spires. The names and dates have been washed away by a hundred or so years of weather and wear. 

A name: Phillips. 

Another name: Benton.

They go on: Verdana, Conklin, Altimere, Gabestein, Travers, Poman, Zeroval.

They mean nothing to me.

Nothing.

The slush seeps deep into my shoes. My toes grow cold and moist. My breathing is steady, though. It’s level. My legs are sore, but my heart is able, and my spirit is willing.

It’s my birthday.

I’m looking for my birthday in the dates etched into stone all around me. It’s a game. 

There’s one person I know I share a birthday with, but just like all the people under the ground I’m running by, we don’t talk anymore.

I pass a headstone showing the name and dates of someone who died when they were twelve.

Maybe all this exercise is just me running away. 

What’s that Pink Floyd lyric? 

“You run and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking”?

I take a left at the fork toward the back of the property, where the snow is still untouched, and sigh deeply. Here, I feel self-conscious. There are still empty plots back here, reminding me of how easy it would be to just take the fucking pills and manage my illness.

Sometimes I joke and tell myself I’m still young, but I’m forty. 

Old enough to die of things like prostate cancer or a corroded artery.

As old as my friend’s mom when she died of cancer. 

Her son didn’t even make it that far.

And why is that so unfair? It feels like such a catastrophic loss. Life ends, and yet we all get surprised when it happens, as if it’s alright that it happens, just not to me, and not right now. 

I get back to the fork in the road and take the right toward the front entrance. It’s snowing now, gently tossed by a welcome breeze. I’m hot when I shouldn’t be: too many layers. Just like all the layers of feeling I have for running in places like these.

A dark blue truck passes heading in the opposite direction. I wave to the driver, but they either don’t see me or don’t care because they’re coming right at me and when we’re about to hit I jump into the snow just off the road and twist my ankle. I get up and scream, but the driver keeps driving, it’s pathetic muffler coughing as it continues down the cemetery’s main path.

I cough, too. From raising my voice in the cold, dry air. I put weight on my left leg; the ankle holds. I hop in place a few times to test if I’m able to run. 

When it’s clear I’m good to go, I sigh, and toss one last look at the snowy lot and its wintery gravestones. My heart softens at what I see with my eyes: generations of families lowered into the cold earth and buried deep. 

Maybe to keep their secrets close. 

Maybe to lower their voices to whispers.