mavenist

The Burial

I had been to the cemetery several times by the time I was thirteen, mostly with all the wrong intentions. My friends and I would sneak in at night, sometimes just to hang out and feel the rush of being in a mysterious place all alone, knowing we weren't supposed to. I was always drawn to the cemetery and its mystical surroundings, and was fascinated by death and the afterlife. It was unbeknown to me that I would soon be confronting my first experience of death and that my view of the cemetery would be changed forever. The death was my fathers. He was the unsuspecting victim of a murder. The memories of my fathers bruised, swollen and distorted face and fresh and vividly imprinted in my mind. A lot of the time surrounding my father's death is blurred with small fragments of time that stand out like a lightening bolt striking in the pitch-blackness of night.
What I remember most about my father is his laughter. As far as my father's memorial service goes, I don't remember much of the mushy things said about him, but instead I remember the funny stories, and the stories that told of my father's compassion and generosity. There is one thing that I do remember in its entirety about the day of my father's funeral and that is the burial of my father.
The burial of my father was directly after the memorial service and no one outside of blood relation was invited except for my father's girlfriend and best friend, which made the assembly a small eleven including the pastor. I recall driving up to the burial site and stepping out of our vehicle into the warmth of June. Images flashed through my head of me and my friends at that exact same cemetery, my father laying unconscious on the floor, myself fleeing from my father's bar, to me kissing my father's hand before laying it back down to the hospital bed where he would die. I was overwhelmed with emotions and once again had the desire to flee, as I did with all the things I didn't know how to handle.
Instead, I stood there frozen like a deer caught in headlights. I began surveying the scenery almost as if I was approving the place in which my father was to be buried. I felt like I had been standing there for centuries before the pastor began to speak. I don't really remember much of what the pastor said because I was focusing on the small hole in the ground, in which my father's cremated body was to be placed. The darkness and depth of the hole seemed so dooming and I remember the small, rectangular, golden box that held the remains of my father. After the box was set into its hole each of us at the burial threw a small handful of dirt onto the box and said our final goodbyes.
It was there in that moment with unfeigned tears, the most true and powerful tears that one could have, that I realized my father was gone. Nothing I could do would be able to change the past or bring my father back. It was there in that cemetery, after putting my father's body to rest that I began a new chapter in my life, one that didn't include my beloved daddy.