Grave Beneath the Oak Trees
THEY BURIED ME on a quiet corner lot at the far end of the cemetery under a canopy of tall oak trees. I liked it there just fine.
My family had known me pretty well, and I suppose they figured I would appreciate a gravesite a little bit off the beaten path, where I could take a long rest and enjoy The Big Sleep. When the sun would rise in the morning, it would hit my tombstone just right, causing a gentle yellow reflection to coat the grass that covered the dirt that weighed heavily upon the top of my coffin.
There were birds, too. Lots and lots of birds. Mockingbirds, bluebirds, finches, and even an occasional red-tail hawk, that would swoop down and scoop up a rat or two for lunch. More than anything else, I enjoyed the chirps and the sounds that the birds would all make, communicating with each other across the open field under the hot sun, as a fall breeze would blow on by and scoot leaves here and there and everywhere. The chirping of the birds was musical and melodic and would make me feel like I was alive again, if only for a brief, fleeting moment.
The groundskeeper did a good job of keeping the lawn green and fresh. I suppose that the visitors appreciate a bright green lawn, because it makes them forget that they are stomping across a field of dead bones. The groundskeeper would mow the lawn every Wednesday afternoon, and the roar of the lawnmower would rumble my coffin just a tad, whenever he would roll over my grave. But I didn’t mind — the rumbling reminded me of when I used to soak in the hot tub and feel the water jets relieve my back after a long day at work.
But things do not stop changing when you die. They keep moving and stopping and starting. People come and they go, just as when you were alive. The six months of peace and happiness I enjoyed at Lakeview Cemetery came to a screeching halt the day they buried Agnes Stromberg in the plot next to mine.
There was almost no one at her funeral, and now I know why. I heard Agnes screaming in her coffin as they lowered her into the ground. She was kicking and punching too, and I could swear that I heard her clawing and scraping the inner walls of her coffin.
After all the commotion at Agnes’s her funeral, I needed a good night’s rest. But Agnes came to me during the blackest part of the night, when all was usually silent — when even the nighttime predators have had enough activity.
Agnes came to me and she wanted to talk about things. All sorts of things. Her kids, her no good nephews, her neighbor that was too cheap to chip in for a new fence separating their backyards. Agnes did not have a single good thing to say about anyone or anything. And her voice sounded like one of those diesel engines they used in Mercedes-Benz’s in the 1980s. Too many menthol cigarettes and vodka martinis, I suppose.
But I knew that Agnes was nervous and scared and that it was her first night in the graveyard, so I listened quietly, and nodded politely when appropriate. She would just not let up, though. I tried floating over to the other side of the cemetery, where the land was empty and the future tenants had yet to arrive. But old Agnes could not take a hint, and she followed right on my transparent heels, running that diesel engine mouth of hers straight through until sunrise.
By the time Agnes finally let me be, I was so tired that I felt as if I had been up all night drinking cheap whiskey at a bachelor party. As I watched Agnes descend through the dew-soaked green grass and back into her coffin, I knew that a change was in order.
I sat with my butt on the grass and my back up against my tombstone, watching an angry orange sun lift itself up and over the Saddleback mountain range.
Across the highway, a new neighborhood subdivision had just been completed. The neighborhood was so new, that the streets were still covered with dirt that had tumbled out of the backs of the construction trucks as they drove on down the road.
A man and a woman were emerging from the rear of a moving truck, carrying a sofa into their new home, through an open garage door. There were two young children following them — a boy about 10 years old, and a little girl riding a pink scooter. The boy looked like he was supposed to be helping them carry the couch, but he just had one hand lazily hanging from one of the sofa cushions, making no effort to assist his parents.
The house was painted white and gray, and a red front door stood guard at the entrance to the suburban castle. A white picket fence formed a tiny barrier around a postage stamp square of freshly laid sod. The home looked quiet and peaceful and undisturbed. The kind of place where a fella could get some rest.
I peeled myself off of my tombstone, stood up, and brushed the wet grass from my butt. I drifted toward the family and their new house, and as I got closer, the house became larger and the faces of the family members came clearly into focus. They seemed happy and excited, with their entire futures spread out before them.
They could not see me, of course, but I could hear every word that they were speaking. I promised myself that I would be quiet and invisible and unnoticeable. But even for the dead, those are not easy tasks. I would just have to do the best that I could.
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