Grave Intentions

I wish the grass here was lush and silky like some grass is. I want to swim my arms and legs through it like you do in your sheets when you first wake up on Sunday mornings. But the grass is brown and pokey underneath my belly where my tee-shirt rides up and on the underside of my arms.

I’m lying on top of Rob’s grave anyway.

But I don’t swim in it. Instead I close my eyes and listen to the wind rustle the trees and hear birds. I hear car engines, too, from the nearby roads, but I pretend they are wind, too.

I was hoping there wouldn’t be anybody around so that I could talk openly to Rob, though I only have to turn my mind to him and we can converse the other way.  The wind snares madly at the trees in consent.

But there are people here, planting flowers four graves down.

I wonder what his body looks like now? After ten years would it be just skeleton yet? Or a mummy? Or only slightly decayed? When does the flesh rot off bone completely – underground, with no oxygen?

The wind is madly hopping from tree to tree, ruffling the pages of my journal and my hair. Smiling, I wonder what Rob is trying say. And why – if he is trying to say something – he’s not communicating in my mind – as was our custom years ago.

You won’t listen to me now, he teases. You’re writing and not turning your mind to me.

Do you have something of import to say?

No. Only that I’m always here for you. Forever. Through good times and bad.

The wind slows to caress my cheeks, then ruffles again in laughter.

And I think of Paul, who promises those things, too.

Being in Massachusetts is weird now. We drove to a park in Rhode Island yesterday and I felt sick with Fernanda driving. Not carsick, but sick with worry and fear. She drives too close to cars and doesn’t lift her foot from the gas pedal when the car in front of us brakes. And I realized today that I was afraid we’d crash. Even when I drive here, my hands are clasped around the wheel and my shoulders are tense and the teeth in my mouth ache from clenching.

I remembered for years that I didn’t want anyone but me driving Aubrey anywhere. Her first field trip on a bus was traumatic for me.

I like lying on my back on Rob’s grave. It feels oddly comforting, as if I’m snuggling with him. On the way here to the cemetery I saw a young man walking down the road and his facial features reminded me of Rob.

I remember seeing other men through the years that have looked like Rob, but only one that made me look more than once.

It was in a group of people outside waiting for my step-daughter to get out of school. He was turned away from me with a young girl in pink at his side. His hands on his hips, the way his shorts fell and his hair cut all paralyzed me. I stared at his back for two minutes but never had the courage to call attention to myself and seek out his face.

The first time I brought Aubrey to Rob’s grave after we’d moved away to Oregon, she picked up a rock and handed it to me. I had picked one up, too. But she hadn’t seen me do it.

I kept them both for a few years, until they disappeared one time while going through his box of things. (More like Rubbermaid tote – but you know what I mean. Box sounds more elegant.) The stones’ import was forgotten, I suppose, because I don’t have them now.

(GRIEF TIP #1: Always label everything even though you know there’s no way you could forget the significance of one of your treasures.)

How can I keep coming here to Massachusetts? I feel useless and dis-oriented.

To remember little tidbits I forget back home, I travel here as pilgrimage to never forget.

To forge a bond between the cousins in case it’s needed later on when the children are older and they want a friend that remembers them from back when. Or if anything ever happened to me and Paul, the kids would come here and Zoe and Nora would become their sisters. Insurance against them being strangers if that were ever to transpire. These are all my reasons.

Is that cold? Heartless?

I feel floaty and restless.

I don’t know how to tell our story anymore. Has it been too long ago? I want to cry here, at his grave, like a true widow. But so much of what I think widows are, come from books and movies. Odd sentiment, beings that I am a widow and lived such a horror. And the truth is, I have felt like crying here – even twice on the way to the gravesite – but I stopped them, the tears, to save them for the cemetery. Isn’t that stupid?

The ground is hard, but I don’t want to get up from Rob yet – like he’s sleeping next to me. I wonder if he’d like me now. Maybe. Some of me has changed (I think even Fernanda notices my growing confidence) but my parts of color are more pronounced, and that may be likable to him. Or not. He was pretty opinionated and jealous.

I imagine texting Paul.

                                                                        At the grave.

                                                                        Wanna say anything to Rob?

But I already know the answer.

                                                                        Thank you.

As strange as that may seem to others, I understand this perfectly.

I’m sorry you died – but because you did – thank you. Thank you for my wife. Thank you for helping her become the woman she is now. I never would’ve had her in my life except for you – so thank you.

And now I tear up. But I don’t know why. Because of the beauty in Paul’s soul? Because I love Paul and I thank Rob, too? Or cry because of Rob’s death -- and that it feels creepy to thank him for dying?

The wind whips up again and I take deep breaths … I allow the love of the universe to fill me up. A mantra. It works and I feel calmer.

I’ve collected a little yellow stone from beneath me that reminds me of the sidewalk chalk Joey was playing with two days ago.

(I wonder what Rob’s casket looks like now?)

It’s odd. When I get up to leave, I find I can’t. Not yet, for some reason. I wait to see if I can know.

I like sitting here. It’s the first time in ten years I’ve allowed myself the time to just sit and write or rest while here. Usually it’s just a quick duty call of sorts. Something I do before leaving Massachusetts.

I’ve always wanted a place to visit in Oregon. I planted a pear tree (that’s what Rob told me Pereira – our last name – meant) in Oregon at my first house, but moved soon after. It died under the first renters’ care. I planted another one just this spring – many years later – still with that wish to have an Oregon monument of sorts to visit. The dog ate the damn tree.

I was beginning to think I wasn’t meant to have a place to grieve, that I must always carry my conversations with me instead of bringing them to his gravesite (or proxy site.) But then weeks later little sprouts of leaves have poked out of this seemingly dead, and definitely violated, stick in the ground. There are no branches, just leaves sticking out of a teeny dwarf variety trunk. The leaves start all the way at the ground. So funny and awkward looking – but determined and proud.

The wind calls again and I wonder if Rob helped those leaves to grow – to remind me not to give up hope. That remembering him and loving him still, after all this time, is not wrong. And that loving Paul is not wrong and that, perhaps, Rob is saying thank you, too. To Paul. For loving me and bringing me back to life – and love.

Thank you