When it's My Turn to Go

I had one of those moments yesterday evening in which you are moved to tears by something that is not a part of you--something that is so separate from your own identity that in a strange way it is almost a parallel you, a glimpse forward into a life that is not so much foreign as it is not yet familiar.

I took a walk to the Woodlawn Cemetery down the road from the pottery shop. I pass by it at least twice every day, whether I'm headed into town or just on a run to the hardware store. For years I have wanted to stroll through, but I'd never gotten the chance until yesterday.

The cemetery is sprawled across the side of a slowly inclining hill, headstones dotting the curved shank of the land with a horseshoe-shaped driveway marked with Enter and Exit signs. I went in through the exit (because you know me, Defyer of All Rules) and made my way past what I think of as the "gaudy" graves--mainly those marked with bronze busts. Near a bench at the back of the plot was the following headstone:

Ten. He was ten. I have lived more than twice as long as he will ever have a chance to. Seeing this marker was just the first jolt in a series of jolts that sent me out the entrance of the cemetery an hour later, weeping. The more I wandered, the more I realized that there truly were treasures buried beneath the hummingbird feeders and glass vases filled with fake plastic flowers, alive eternally in a way that nothing else can be. There were flat headstones with cylindrical holes embedded on both sides to act as flower holders, but most of them were full of cobwebs and pine needles, and this made my heart ache. The following headstone caught my eye:


I didn't notice the date immediately because my first thought was how this stone marked the grave of a person whose date of birth was a mystery, a person who lived and died ageless. It wasn't until I passed a second of these stones that I realized that they weren't marking the deceased, but merely saving places for the living. Not a commemoration of death but an acknowledgment of it. It was like these people were living their lives backwards, starting with death and working their way forward. I had never seen anything like it before, and I loved it instantly for its suggestion that death is not always the end.

Soon after, I came to a headstone that literally brought me to my knees. The instant I read the inscription I felt my eyes fill with tears, and I sat down in the brittle grass and I let them come:


Yes, there is a tense disagreement--tense as in Present vs. Past...not heated--but the sentiment is exactly what I hope will be my effect on those around me. I wept because I can have no greater aspiration than such a statement: "We who know her knew no one finer." I could have known this woman, and maybe I did. Maybe I passed her on the street, sipped on my chai at a table next to hers, nearly collided with her grocery cart in the produce section of the Island Market. It's comforting to think that I knew her in some capacity, that this "no one finer" was a presence in my life beyond a chance encounter with a headstone in a graveyard.

Rest in peace, Jessie Lavender. I hope my grave marker will say the same of me when it's my turn to go.