One never knows what could happen in a graveyard.
Ever since I was young, I remember frequenting the local graveyard nearly every day. Sometimes with my father or my mother, and other times all alone, I'd wander in its depths, discovering a new area every day.
A cemetery is considered an unusual place for a child to wander. Morbid, perhaps even sinister. Keeping death always one's mind is not a usual way to live, surely. But it was not a bad way for me. I enjoyed looking at the different stories that are carved on the cold marble. Families bought large plots of land for themselves, with epitaphs such as "Loving Mother" and "Our darling baby."
Tales of the past lay hidden in a cemetery. Here, a child was born and died the same day. There, a mother and newborn babe share a grave. Here an eight-year-old girl lays at rest. Here, a fifteen-year-old boy was put into the ground. How did it happen? One can't help but wonder.
When I grew up and came to the age where dreams of romance and adventure overtake childish dreams of ponies and candy, I didn't stop coming to the cemetery. Instead, I wandered the rough cement paths, imagining who I could meet with there. What a romantic place to find my true love.
A scene replayed in my head as I surveyed the familiar gravestone that represented a brave soldier who died in combat. Myself, wandering through the tall marble slabs that rise above the smooth grass. A young woman coming towards me. We would meet in the middle and laugh a little at the strangeness of wandering in a graveyard. We would continue to have chance encounters after that, at first only in the cemetery; then later in the grocery store; then again in a coffee shop. Friendship would slowly blossom into love.
Other scenes unfolded in my mind as well. One, I remember, began once again with me wandering in the cemetery. I would see a stooped, frail figure kneeling in front of a small, humble gravestone. Dainty blue flowers fall from a withered hand to the base of the stone, and tears run down a wrinkled cheek. I would walk forward - it is an old woman mourning the loss of her husband. It was so many years ago, but she still visits his grave every week and mourns him, and puts fresh flowers on his small stone monument. I would comfort her, and we would become friends. I would help her recover from the grief of her husband's loss, and attend her funeral when she joined the angels.
I still wander there, laughing at my dreams, yet hoping against hope that my dull, ordinary life will somehow exceed my expectations and send an extraordinary event into my life. I know it won't happen. I know it's impossible. I know things like that only take place in books.
But then, one never really knows what could happen in a graveyard.
