Where I'll Be

The other evening I went for a walk to the cemetery. From the top of the hillside you can see down into the valley, across acres of pasturelands with their grazing cows and August-thin creek beds. Though I want to be cremated when I die, if ever there was a graveyard that made me believe in belonging to one plot of earth for the rest of eternity this would be it. It is a quiet, humble place. Solo cups once full of wildflowers lie toppled, the water long evaporated, the brittle flowers fanned flat against the headstones like decks of cards. A scattering of American flags dot the stiff grass. Small pots of plastic roses and daises that won't ever wilt, won't ever decompose. I sat on a bench there for close to an hour, watching the sun scatter through pine needles and shift across the fields. I don't dwell much on my own death (which is odd, really, because I'm scared of such ridiculous things as banks and earwigs), but it's not something to which I'm particularly looking forward. This place, though, this hillside of the departed, makes death look peaceful and golden. It's an unexpected comfort.

After a while I made my way back to my apartment, stopping at the West Beach farm stand at the end of my road to pick out a bunch of basil and a zucchini for dinner. The air was warm and heavy with the scent of blackberries, and within minutes of arriving back home I was on my tiptoes in the shop yard, dropping the berries into a colander cradled in the crook of my arm. Penny was in the studio with the door open and I could hear her laughing at a book on tape. I walked up the driveway to Syd's house, checked to make sure I had no work in the shipping room, and headed up the basement stairs. When I opened the door, Syd was on her recliner watching the U.S. Open. She didn't ask what I needed, or even say "hey," which would have been an acknowledgment that I hadn't always been standing right there. She didn't look at me like I was rude for barging into her house unannounced. She simply turned away from the TV and said, "Come here, quick! This fifteen-year-old girl is about to beat Cibulkova!"

As I write this I am lying on my bed with my window open, listening to Janet give a customer directions to the bakery. It strikes me how much I need this, the sound of her watering the roses as she explains that you take a right out of the driveway and then a left at the hardware store at the top of the hill. These are the sounds that I've come to know as a part of me. The bell-like clink of Syd stacking bowls straight from the kiln. The raven that perches in one of the firs outside my window and wakes me every morning, with its emphatic pitch, three minutes before my alarm is set to go off. How I pass through the studio one minute and Matt is trimming mugs to heavy metal, but ten minutes later he's switched to an episode of This American Life. It's amazing how much a sound can feel like home.

I miss my friends and my family, and I'm a shell of a person without my cat, but this place is my heartbeat. I have taken so much away from my years here--several days of bitter loneliness, yes, but also more happiness than I feel I deserve. There haven't been many times in my life when I've truly felt I belonged somewhere or to someone, but I belong here, to these people. No matter what happens to my physical body when I die, this is where I will remain forever.