Dead Funny

My mouth was dry and my heart beat so hard I thought it would burst from my chest. It had been two years since my husband, Peter’s, death but even still I felt the familiar pain and loss when I went to visit his grave. We had met on a Saturday so it was the day I chose to visit him. The sun was low in the sky and cast shadows on the gates making them appear even more daunting. The green, gloss paint was peeling away as if it too was dying. The name “Mount Joy” also a local prison, suggested that the cemetery was more of a prison then a final resting-place.

          Walking into the graveyard I kept my head high, nose flaring again as fresh tears reached my eyes. Looking around it was exactly how I remembered. Wind worn headstones that some time ago must have read someone’s name, the smell of freshly dug earth mingled with a smell of rotten flowers. Passers-by looked up for just enough time for me to see their red eyes and pale faces, head once again dropping wearily to look at the ground. Their visiting time was over but mine was just beginning.

          I shuffled along the mud ground dug into a sort of path by many decades of visitors. Smiling sadly as I reached his grave, I knelt and gingerly scraped the words of the headstone clean. I smelled the tiger lilies I had brought for him, his favorite, and laid them gently on the grave. Standing up once again I said a quick ‘Our Father’ and felt the cold ring on my finger. Pain and loneliness stabbing at my heart, I let a tear roll down my crumpled face watching as it hit the dusty ground.

          I turned slowly ready to leave when I felt something grab my leg. Looking down I saw a hand and stifled a scream biting instead, into the soft flesh of my hand. Closing my eyes I rotated fully, horror movies of zombies and the dead flooding my mind. I opened my eyes half expecting to see the face of my dead husband but instead jumping at the sight of a young man kneeling before me, ring in hand. “You dropped your ring” He mumbled, realizing how he must have looked.

          Reaching out for the ring I blushed finally dawning on me how attractive he was.  “Thanks” I gasped, then stopped. I watched as he stood up, his lean, tall frame casting a shadow on the grave behind him. He smiled sheepishly and scratched his head. “This may sound odd, here of all places, but would you like to go for a coffee?” he asked. I caught myself before I answered his question. I thought of my husband, lying no more than a foot away, guilt crept into my heart.

          I opened my mouth to politely decline when I suddenly realized that maybe this was meant to be, was it a sign from my husband to move on and be happy. Why waste such a golden opportunity. “Sure I’d love to” I answered, smiling in a way I hadn’t smiled in a long time. Leaving the graveyard and its dead inhabitants I laughed to myself at my luck. Sometime in the future I would look back and realize just how ‘dead’ funny meeting in a graveyard was.