In Lieu Of Flowers
It is a dark and stormy night. A night when the numerals on the bedside clock slide by common sense and become absurd. You go to bed at 10 and your clock tells you it's 1:23 and it's only been 5 minutes. The creaking of the house starts to sound like a telltale heart beating, and you realize that if you're a private detective and someone murders your partner, you have to do something even if you don't like him, although you stick your neck out for nobody. But wherever there's a cop beating up a guy you'll be there, and there's a signpost up ahead. Somewhere in the distance, a dog is barking.
A really obnoxious dog.
What runs through your mind when you can't sleep is deadly trivia, the stuff that comes out only in the dark and quiet. You start thinking about old movie dialogue and baseball stats, you try to remember the name of that guy who sat next you in English class, you attempt to list the entire bridge crew of the original "Star Trek" and you forget Chekov, and pretty soon you've got a lot on your mind. You either do something else or plan on watching the sunrise.
So it occurred to me that there might be a window open in the basement, and that now might be a good time to close it.
Our basement used to be a family room, then a master bedroom, and now it's an attic. It's filled with broken furniture and old lamps and a VCR that might or might not work, I can't remember. The floor is strewn with the remnants of almost 20 years of kids: Disney videos, picture books, stuffed animals.
Suddenly I was thinking about my brother.
A few years ago, my brother moved from Phoenix to a small town in Oregon, from Metropolis to Mayberry. This was a town you could do on foot, no sweat. A ten-minute walk from City Hall to what passes for suburbs, and that includes stopping at the store for a cold can of Foster's.
He explored, then, walking in the mornings or after work or on weekends. So sooner or later he was bound to find the cemetery.
A small town cemetery is a good place to stretch your legs, walk under the shade and stir up stories that don't belong to you. He browsed in this beautiful place, lush and green, enjoying the serenity of his surroundings, and then he saw the toys.
Listen: A father of four sees toys carefully placed in front of a tombstone and he really doesn't want to go any further. What he really wants is to turn around and head back the way he came.
They were familiar figures. Luke Skywalker. Batman. A ninja turtle, some Legos, a truck. That's a story you don't want to imagine; you don't want to let your mind wander and fill in the gaps. You don't want to think about parents, about grandma and grandpa and siblings.
A few months later, I sat on his front porch and he told me the story. If it hadn't been my brother, if I hadn't known him to be a thoughtful and honest man, I might have thought "folklore" and forgotten it. As it is, I can't forget. I've told the story before. I will do it again.
It was eerie, to me, at first. My mind wandered to black-and-white movies, to "Psycho" and "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?" I thought about Norma Desmond ready for her close-up, existing in the present but only alive in the past. And I kept thinking about Who. A mother? A brother? Whoever it was, their grief was overwhelming and a little scary, maybe even neurotic. It took me a while to realize I was wrong.
Even children, with a little coaching, will tell you that a cemetery is not about death. It's about remembering. And once I wrapped my brain around that, once I realized it wasn't a story about grief, then I understood Who.
Someone who loved a child.
This is not Hallmark card love. This is not even love inscribed on a tombstone. This is force-of-nature love, palpable love, love that grabs the world by the collar and forces us to listen. Listen, this love says: Once, there was a little boy. Remember.
I am in awe of this love.
My brother has returned several times. There have been changes; Spiderman will show up, or a collection of match cars. Someone has been tending the grave.
I know nothing about this story, except what it is. A child was buried and someone remembers, and he will now be forever young. As he was when he died, in a small town in southern Oregon, which, according to the tombstone, was in 1945.
Funny what you think about when you can't sleep.
5:16:17 AM 
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