For the six-month anniversary of his passing, I visited his grave. It was hard for me to do because, as I've mentioned, seeing his grave would be the final acknowledgement that he is gone. As long as I didn't see it, I could pretend to myself he was just away for a while, deployed somewhere or off on a business trip and he'd be back by and by, just as always.
Of course, I was at the funeral, but I was in such an emotional state that I could pretend I hallucinated that, or I'd just push it out of my mind, as I do so many things I don't want to think about.
Anyway, I went, forced myself. I dearly did not want to. But I felt an obligation. I could not abandon him, leave him neglected, but I did not want to feel all the rush of crushing emotions fresh again.
But I went.
I am turned to stone.
And I felt nothing. Nothing. I looked down at the grave. It was just a grave. He was not there. I can't explain what I felt. I am just remembering what I remember of how I felt, not experiencing what I felt at that moment. But it was the least expected thing. Nothing. Just nothing. I studied the ground around the grave and the grave itself. I noted bits of earth, twigs, grass stems that were exactly as they had been on that cold, windy, bleak January day. I hadn't realized that I had noticed them at the time, but standing there in the heat of July, the sun beating down, I saw them as I saw them then. Burned into my brain. The trivial. The inconsequential. But my Jeff, my dearest one.... No. Nothing. Nothing. He was not there. I was alone.
I'd brought a lock of my hair and I tucked it down beside the headstone. Then I left. But then I thought, no, what I felt can't have been right, can't have happened. I must have missed something. I returned to the grave. Stood there. Nothing. It was as if the grave were empty. But more like it wasn't even really a grave, just a plot of grass among a lot of other plots of grass in a curious field full of curious stone markers. I felt as if I stood there long enough I would become a stone marker, too.
