Everything in the grassy field is bright and clear like I remember it; the gravel roads and park benches carry emotional freight. The treetops are even, following a smooth curve around the perimeter of the space they enclose. There are people everywhere, interlopers in my personal journey into the past. I pass through them, invisible, dissolving into the vast, swirling pool of people minding their own business, setting up towels to sit on, throwing Frisbees, setting up tents. Why is this place so crowded? Don't I have the right to my own unblemished nostalgia?
I reach the trail. My hands shake as I walk down it, so I hide them in my pockets. It wasn't far, I think, my heart pounding. If I didn't get bored or scared when I was six, it could hardly have been less than a few hundred yards.
I emerge placed, concluded, resolved. I walk past the tombstones, lightly brushing my fingertips across them for reasons I can't explain. Names and dates, words and numbers, the total absence of thoughts or feelings. Ritual, reconciliation, resolution. To say that we mourn is to mourn; to say that everything is in its place is to make it so. Ashes to sense, dust to meaning. Flowers of hope blooming from the corpse of a dead god. As Tolstoy would have it, this was the place where people gathered to say "I'm sorry" and to think "I'm glad it wasn't me." Are the dead not as subjugated, oppressed, and marginalized a people as immigrants to this country, or even child laborers in the third world? We never really respect them. We use them to absolve our guilt over what we did to them in life. Gathering and saying that we remember the dead is the most convenient way to forget them. It's just one of those things. Fold your laundry, brush your teeth, bury your dead.
I remind myself that this is all philosophical, that it doesn't describe at all the relationship I have with my dead parents. At this point, I don't ever want to stop feeling guilty. I deserve the guilt. I just want to know the truth. Maybe I've already found out all there is to know.
Their shared grave appears suddenly at my side, prompting a double-take. I freeze, letting the wind carry on its way past me as I read their names to myself again and again. Should I have brought flowers? Of course not. Flowers are Hallmark cards for dead people.
I stand there, waiting for something to happen, for some sudden memory to flash back, telling me what I need to do. It would be nice if my parents could speak to me from beyond the grave, tell me what their last wishes were, lead me to the life-altering revelation that death is not the end.
Instead, the tombstone sits there, cold and static. I brush a spider off my sleeve and start making my way back towards the car. Bloo is gone. I'm perfectly safe. I run a red light on the way home.