I walked along the quiet rows, trying to find the network signal. The phone was hoisted high in the air, searching for a point of connection and somehow, this seemed irreverent to the time and the place. Work calls will come when work calls will come, right? That’s just the way the world worked. This space was a slight inconvenience from time to time, until it became convenient. Permanently. Looking up beyond the phone, I saw slivers of light curving their way through the branches and the leaves of the trees, all the various shades of green that were possible in such a place. No signal. Might as well go back to the service.

It was customary to be here and remember. The crowd of people was gathered around a solitary man and teary eyes were locked into the fervour with which this preacher spoke. He spoke of the old passing away and the new springing forth. The bible climbed higher and higher, as the tears fell heavier and the sighs escaped the quivering lips. Death had a way of putting people’s perspectives the right side up.

From an outside vantage point, one could observe more closely and I almost always did that. Life looked more interesting and less severe that way. I looked at the mound of dark, red sand that the preacher stood on, at the head of the open grave. Bits of loose earth escaped from under his feet and onto the casket that they had just lowered six feet under. A shiny wooden casket with a simple cross on it. This particular casket was built too early. 50 to 60 years too early, if you ask me. Is 21 even the right age to die? A life cut short by a loss of will to live. Why at 21? According to one Instagram photo, this was the age to climb a mountain and feel the cold air brushing wildly against your face. This was when you were supposed to feel like you would live forever. You gave up too soon, Ivan. You ran too quickly through the sand in your hourglass. The ending was a little
too abrupt, bruh.

I caught myself before I loudly said amen, when the benediction drew to a close. Brief puffs of hope were floating in the air from the words that still hung above this grave. Jesus was the resurrection and the life. The portal to eternal life. It’s a message often heard at funerals. It was like touchpoints on a checklist of Bible-appropriate things to say at an uncomfortable time like this. But… death had a way of putting people’s perspectives the right side up.

Why was I here? I barely knew this kid. I guess I forced myself to come, to remember and to remind myself that life is but a wisp of vapour. Before you know it, it vanishes. I decided that I would once again wander amidst the rows of graves, intermittent spurts of extravagance with patches of simplicity. A family grave stood majestic with its regal angels guarding the four corners of the plot. Not far from this display of remembrance was an unmarked grave, slowly sinking into the ground with each passing year. Some sections were decidedly catholic, and some were proudly protestant. There was centuries worth of them, all tightly cluttered together in one space. The harmony of the birds chirping inside clashed with the sound of impatient honking and traffic outside. It was almost hilarious how none of it mattered.

For some inexplicable reason, I sat down on one of the graves under the shade of a tree and began to sketch the empty grave that was right in front of me. A hollow, rectangular carving in the earth. It waited to be filled. Yes, with a body whose breath had returned to God.  But also words. I saw, in my mind’s eye, a torrent of letters and words and sentences pouring into the grave, chasing the body into the hollowed earth like a flood. Depending on the mood, the words changed from cursive to bold caps and back again to all small letters. I began to furiously run my pencil across the small notepad, trying to capture the immensity of the imagery. I sketched and I sketched some more. Forgetting that my phone existed was unheard of when it came to me, but there I was… drawing, sketching, highlights, erasing… my own little creation scene of breathing life into a crucial idea. On paper.

These words in their entirety contained a life’s story. Every word was written by a divine finger, long before even one of those scenes began to play out. Every kind of emotion and thought marched in the air before it fell into the hollow in the ground. The last ounces of purpose and meaning steadily seeped six feet under. Memories danced and spun around in circles and into the grave. All of a life had come into existence by the bidding of these words and returned to their maker from whom they originated. Whether a novel or a short story, each life’s words are numbered and the fullness of how they are lived out will determine the story that will climb into each grave, as the red earth is shovelled in to cover it.

I sat there on that little gravestone watching the sun hide behind the trees. The sketch on the page was what I had come looking for.