Cemetery Observations

If someone were to put a picture on my grave, what would it be? Would it be a notebook, a song, something in French? Would it be me? Would I look happy? Would people walk by my resting place—twenty, fifty, a hundred years later—and say, “She looked like a good person.”?

Walking through this cemetery, looking at all the forgotten faces, I wonder what kind of person I’ll turn out to be. All of these people had wondered the same thing at one time or another, and some of them never got the chance to know the answer.

I wonder what kind of flowers people will lay at their feet for me. Roses?—no, not roses, that’s too formal. Lilies, maybe, because they’re bright and happy. But I’m not bright and happy. Am I? Is there a flower that describes, personifies me? I have no idea.

What will people say about me? What will be written in the stone? “Always in our hearts,” “Our thoughts fly to heaven with you,” or something even more emotional? Or something like “You will be missed,” which seems to be the equivalent to “Have a nice summer,” written in a high school yearbook?

Will people remember me? As I walk through the rows of the dead, I know at least some of these people have no one left. No one is alive to remember them—their families have died off or moved on. They’re alone now, and I find the thought horribly depressing. Obviously, logically, I realize they’re in the ground, six feet under, dead…however you want to put it. But I see some of these graves that have been completely abandoned, or even vandalized, and I want to do something. I find myself wishing I had some flowers to lay, some memory of them, or at least something to say. Instead, all I can do is look at their faces and wonder.

My mind shoots off a thousand questions at once: When was this picture taken? Was he a nice person? Did he live a fulfilling life? How did he die?

From those questions comes the inevitable pondering about my own life. When will my picture be taken? Am I a nice person? Am I leading a fulfilling life? And of course, the morbid fascination of the human race: How, and when, will I die?

I don’t have any of these answers, and I probably never will. I’m okay with that. When my time comes, when I go, I want to be thinking about today, not five years ahead or five years ago. I want to live for now; that way, the last page of my life will be full. I won’t be waiting, idly filling my time. I’ll be filling the page with experiences, people, love. That way the end will never come too early. If every page of my life is full, the time will be just right. I’ll regret nothing, and I’ll be ready. Scared, yes, of course, but ready.

It’ll be time for another big adventure.