The Wall

The cemetery in the rain is its own kind of cruel. There’s something obscene about standing in cold wet weather at a slab of stone trying to have a relationship with absence. I go because it matters. I go because the kids need it sometimes. I go because love still has nowhere else physical to put itself. But there are days it feels like I’m bringing flowers and words and memories to the world’s most permanent dead end. I hate that. I hate even writing that. Because the visits mattered to me. They still do, in a way. But grief changes shape. At first the grave feels like the last address you have. Later it starts to feel like evidence of the whole scam. This person was alive. Warm. Sharp. Funny. Annoying. Specific. Here. And now here’s a stone. How the hell is that supposed to mean anything close to enough? The kids run around or ask questions or leave little things, and I try to be steady. But inside I’m still asking the same impossible question: How is this what remains?