Not Afraid of the Dark
by LorraineHannah and I took one of our walks again last night. We set out at sunset; now that it’s February, the five o’clock hour comes before the light cedes everything to the dark, and we walked in the last of the shadows up the road toward one of our regular haunts.The Brooktondale cemetery spans the history of the village. Some of the graves indicate birthdates from the 1700s’s; last week, I nearly stumbled into a freshly dug rectangle of earth that had sunk a couple of feet from all of the freezing and thawing that January brought with it. I must admit: the brand new grave was a shock. We don’t often bury our dead in the dead of winter, but rather, wait until the ground softens in the spring. Until then, coffins are kept in storage, awaiting the days when new life can come up, and old life can be returned to the earth.Our routine is that Hannah stays on her leash for the half-mile walk up to the cemetery. By that time, she has usually done whatever doggie “business” needs to be done. When we get to the graveyard, I let her off the leash, and the two of us wander. Sometimes, we follow the road that circles the graves. When I walk the road, I pay close attention to who is “inside” and “outside” the old road.As you might expect, outside the road are the newer graves. Some of them stand solitary, like place holders, waiting for the rest of their family members to come join them. Some are already part of small colonies who share the same names, a testament to the fact that many in this area do not wander far from here. They are born, educated, married and buried within a few miles of this community, and when they come back to the earth, they re-join the family that many of them never really left.Others, though, are jolts. The first few times I saw the solitary graves, I had to leave the road to read why these graves stood alone. A stranger might think that someone had been ostracized by their family. Allowed to be in the same graveyard, but cut off from the comfort of being close to family.Turned out, that wasn’t the case at all.Just off the curve of the road sits one of the graves that are increasingly common out here in the country. They’re made of marble, but on the front, lasers have carved out elaborate drawings that depict the life lost. Gone are the Victorian symbols of death and mourning–no more half-covered vases or crosses or weeping women. Rather, the entire front of the grave may be covered by some modern-day laser Norman Rockwell landscape of a farm, or an eight-point buck, a pair of beloved dogs, or even, hauntingly, the laser-etched portrait of the recently deceased. I do not know if these images will stand up long to a Northeast winter, but for now, walking through this portion of the graveyard is like touring an art gallery of self-portraits: “here I am,” the pictures say. “Here’s what was important to me. Here’s how I want you to remember me.” Here is where I’ll find the grave of the young man who died in a car or farm accident, or the teenager who died of an incurable disease.If those graves give me a bump when I see them, there’s another solitary grave that I have almost trained myself not to see when I walk through. Set off almost to the edge of the woods that border the graveyard, at least 20 yards back from the edge of the road, sits a piece of red granite that practically calls to you the first time you walk through this place.She is alone. Beside her stone is an American flag–always–and on her gravestone are the markings that indicate her branch of the service. She was a soldier once. She was in her 20’s. And she died in the 1990’s. I don’t know where she died. I do not know if she died overseas in some desert land, crying for her Mom when the IED went off too close to where she was. Or whether she was the victim of a traffic accident on a base somewhere. Or, whether, to our shame, she was the victim of a fellow soldier. But whatever. She is gone. And her family, perhaps confronted with losing their first (their only?) child, has buried her close to the woods, close to where the deer come out of the forest to nibble the grass of the cemetery. Close to where the redheaded and downy woodpeckers have created their own colonies. Close to the pair of red-tail hawks who nest in the trees and use the farm fields that lie outside the cemetery as their hunting grounds.She seems lonely where she is. So far away from all the other graves. But her grave is well tended. Something new is there all the time, and the American flag is changed regularly–it will never look ragged or unkempt. Still, I can’t bring myself to spend any time sitting with her or trying to know her story. Does that make me a coward?—-Last night, the dog and I walked for a long time. The long shadows disappeared, and by the time we were on our second loop through the graveyard, it had gotten dark. When I was a little kid, I would have been frightened, but not now.As I rounded the bend in the road, on the “inside” of the road, two lights shone. I walked closer. Three small headstones were gathered close, family members all, and in the near-zero temperatures, it was as if they were huddled together. But somebody who had loved those three people had buried pillar lights among the three graves. They were triggered to come on when the sunlight disappeared.I walked closer. The snow had been falling while the dog and I circled. Not a heavy snow, but that crystal snow that, when the light hits, makes you think you’re surrounded by fairy dust. I knelt down by the stones, and brushed from each one the dusting of snow that made the dead nameless.Then, calling the dog to my side, I put her back on her leash, and we walked back home, to the light and the warmth and the love that waited for us there.