Day 6

Sometimes the most powerful presence is made by those who don't intend it, those that cannot speak for themselves, and those who have perhaps been forgotten so long ago.

The anniversary of my grandmother's passing is coming all too quickly in my mind. This will be the third one, and I can say that it never gets easier... but I suppose it shouldn't. She was a remarkable woman with many remarkable talents that have hopefully been passed down into my bloodstream. Oh, how I do miss her.

The plan for today was to visit her grave site for the first time ever. I have always been too afraid, too overcome, too close to even think of going before. But this is a new chapter in my life, one where I face things that may not be natural or joyful. The journey to the cemetery was simple, just a few directions to the east. I made it with little awareness of what I intended for this experience. Once I turned into the iron-barred archway my demeanor switched to something sullen, it was like a storm cloud had just made its way overhead. Not having ever visited before, I was lost as to where the site would be. Initially, I decided it would be a simple phone call to my dad to walk me through the path to get to her. I picked up the phone, but couldn't do it.

It was partially the fact that I wasn't sure if I was ready to see the tombstone-- that makes my memories of her something entirely different than they are now. It was also partially the fact that I didn't really want to talk about it, not to my dad... not to anyone. And it was also in part of the fact that I truly felt like my connection with grandma would go beyond death. I sat there, in my car with the radio off and the window partially down expecting that some cosmic display would send me to her, like gravity or something.

I drove and drove and drove, sometimes making new tracks with my car, being the first to journey down that particular path. I paid close attention to the grinding sound of the snow and the way that the light hit just barely to the tops of nearly all the rows of tombstones. I began focusing on the names and dates of those slabs of stone that so nonchalantly stood for full lives of individuals. Some names were names I recognized, not for those souls who laid resting, but names of people I have had in class or people that I was friends with in high school. These names were most likely not linked, but it made me think an awful lot about those that are currently in my life and how finite life on earth really is. There was a elderly man sitting in the front seat of his sedan, bawling, the way that you do when there is nothing to soothe, nowhere to retreat. It's painful to know that time, in many ways, works against us all and that the time we have to spend with each other is so rare and so unimaginable.

After an hour and a half, I realized, (with some reluctant relief) that I wasn't going to find her grave site this way... and I wasn't about to pick up the phone. So that was that.