You want to know my secret, how I’ve avoided death for so long? The kind of death that creates a hole inside you, a hole that could never be filled, not with all the landfill in the world. It’s actually quite easy: keep your distance from everyone; don’t get attached to anyone.
There are some things at Holy Cross that would be harder to show you.
Like the man I saw wearing a dark-blue shirt, wandering around with a bouquet of red flowers. It was clear from his posture of bent determination that he was looking for someone, but he seemed confused, like he hadn’t been to Holy Cross in a while.
I tailed him as discreetly as possible, when suddenly he stopped.
He had found whoever it was he had come to visit. He knelt down next to the grave, placing those flowers gently, so as not to crush them.
I was wearing my strong glasses that day and I could see his lip was quivering, like he was overcome. Perhaps it was the anniversary of the person’s death. I do not recall the date. The mourner had gray hair, but he was quite young. I wondered if the death was unexpected and he had gone prematurely gray. There are many reported cases of this happening. I wondered about the relation between this young man and the person in the ground. I noticed he was wearing his shirt inside out, though I couldn’t read the label. He must have come to the cemetery in a hurry, eager to get there before it closed.
Or the shirt may have been intentional. I read once that at some funerals people wear their clothes inside out because they believe the land of the dead is a place of opposites, where everything is done backward; the afterlife is an inverted negative image of the world where everyone is just a darker mirror image of themselves. In my estimation, that depiction remains the most credible image of the afterlife, as well as the most frightening.
It soon became apparent the mourner was talking to the person he had come to . . . see. He was talking under his breath, in a register lower than a whisper. He was talking to a person who, like me, could not hear a word of what he was saying. For all intents and purposes, he was engaged in a one-way conversation.
We could claim that conferring with the dead is a futile and possibly psychotic activity. Yet I think we’d be mistaken. I may have only spoken to a corpse once, but I suspect it’s the most profound exchange you can have with another human being. In that they do not interrupt you, are not distracted by their thoughts, the dead make the best listeners, far better than the living. We could go so far as to say that the only worthwhile conversation we can have is with the dead, for they give you their full and undivided attention.