Listening Through The Cemetery Trees

-Listening Through The Cemetery Trees-
by
Keaton Foster

“The End of Her Mysterious Conclusion.”

Rows of trees stand as markers outlining the final homes of several hundred piles of bones. Devoid of a soul, they still know their role. Waiting, rotting away, existing in their own constant state of decay. One day far from now they will become the finest of dust. That alone will mark the closest they will ever get to the end of everything they have ever been.

Freshly placed flowers yearn for life as they slowly rot away. Here, in this tormented place there are more empty vases than full. An indication of the level of abandonment that most should be quite uncomfortable with. I fear that is not the case. As it is said, life in many forms always goes on long after someone dies. People easily misplace time and priority when they still have so much left to experience. Very little of life can be dedicated to death.

I have come here today to say goodbye and after this day I’m not sure if I’ll ever again find it in my jaded heart to return. Justifiable are all of the reasons that I hold close. At least that is what I will tell myself after this day. Sure I myself will die, but the destination of my bones will be nowhere near this place. Another distant graveyard has long since been selected. A place of equal nothingness. My soul, the one that I have spent the last few decades fighting to save will go where the good Lord sees fit and I will be content with whatever he decides comes next.

Above her deep grave shadows do invade. Darkness lingers all around even as the sun hangs high, furiously burning bright in a clear blue sky. All the madness and pain she bore into existence is easily out of sight. The master of us all looks down upon her, in judgment he sighs. He will forget nothing of what she so willingly did. He has punished her in life and I’m sure now in death. She was unforgivable to herself and everyone else. The saddest of truth that must be said.

Listening through the cemetery trees I can still hear her voice and the terrifying choice that she once said to me. Son, this is how it must be, forever I must go and you must be so alone. Survive if you can. Please do whatever it takes, just as I have and will continue to do.

Then with ease, mired in her callous beliefs she turned and forever walked away. Leaving me quite empty. Leaving me devoid of what I needed most. Without a chance I fought to be more than the nothing that she condemned me to. The boy of my youth was taken away and a tortured man was left.

Much shame flooded my heart and soul. For many years heavy did my head hang. Pain and suffering easily became my god. My absolute truth. But despite all of that I somehow managed to survive. I somehow managed to get beyond those darkest of days.

Many years later I would see her face frozen in an eternal state. She looked nothing as I had imagined she would. She looked worn, abused and misused. She looked like she had been through certain hell. I was told that she found her death in a bottle. It numbed her pain and erased her mistakes. It allowed her to forget as I remembered all too well. It allowed her an escape and now so did her death.

It was a fitting end to the ridiculous way in which she lived. Judgment meant, God’s cruel hand won’t ever be kind to those who betray all that he lends as a gift. I was a precious child for such a brief time. She had her chance to walk upon the path but instead she walked away. She left me fighting to survive as she slowly killed herself with the bottle.

They found her festering in a stew of herself, several days after she had expired. Certainly a miracle was lent to the man that crafted her death face because beneath her worn, abused, misused face was something far more freighting. A hellish amalgamation of her difficult life and time honored decomposition. Something that I am glad that I didn’t have to see. Something that no one should have to see.

Listening through the cemetery trees I can hear her voice, regretting her choices. Pleading for another way just as I once did. Her dire words ring out. Only those dead are here to listen. Only those caught in between can relate to her. I’ve come to say goodbye and I won’t return because unlike her in this place I know that I truly don’t yet belong. Life is not yet done with me.

I spill my peace, my words of awkward forgiveness. I place some flowers upon her stone. I run my hands across her name, whispering a kind amen, not really certain of what it will mean to her and her present state of existence.

I make my peace and then I say goodbye.


Listening Through The Cemetery Trees
by Keaton Foster Copyright © 2014