The Talk

On my commute from work, I used to pass a graveyard. I was young and filled with want, as one is at that age, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, the age when life makes demands of you, and you of it, but you’re excited about them because they’re yours. You’re too young to be entrusted with caring for others, but too old not to care for yourself, and you can feel your life bear down on you and ask for a tally of what you’ve done so far, how you’re doing with progress and what you’re planning to do to improve yourself. 

You always have to improve yourself when you’re young, somebody will remind you of that, just in case you forget. Your list of wants is endless, while your means are never a match; you build castles in the air and fantastic lives you know will never happen, but you like to keep them in your mental quiver, just in case that momentous occasion shows up and luck springs up on you, unexpectedly. 

You like to believe in luck at that age, what else is there?

One could be so in charge of one’s fate at twenty-nine, if only one pressed harder and applied oneself more, as one knows one can, because nothing can stand in the way of one’s destiny, the future one shapes for oneself.

And yet, as I passed by the old stones they silently imposed reverence. Listen to those whose lives ended long before your time, they said. 

People just like you. Just like you.

I was always tense and frowning back then, (I still have the eleven lines to prove it), but ambition feels so pointless in the presence of the dead, and I guess I learned to listen to them then, one of the few things I learned to do well at that age, I learned to listen and understand the things that really matter are always unexpected gifts, and to see the fleeting nature of our so-called fate, and laugh at the silliness of the important and the urgent, because nothing that doesn’t outlast the season can be that important in this transient existence in which after a few short years you no longer recognize the person you used to be.

I listened to those departed strangers, whose lives and names I never knew, when they told me to live. You can always trust the departed. They have no hidden motives when they tell you to look past the pointless grind of daily chores and live, live, if you’re lucky to be alive, live!

Luck is not winning the lottery, luck is being here with the sun in your face and the scent of crocuses in your lungs in early spring, and having the sense to wonder what bird is singing so sweet in the tree nearby, that’s luck, you hapless young woman trying to be everything to everybody at all times!

I listened to the departed, always dutiful and polite, eager not to offend as I was at that age, lest someone might not like me, and passed the grave stones with quiet reverence, and only five minutes later forgot their request, because very important paperwork had to be processed, there were no clean clothes left and the boss had asked for that project to be done ASAP, we all know that ASAP project, there is no other kind, but the next day I passed by the graveyard again, and heard the wiser voices of the past scold me for being such an klutz I couldn’t hold a simple concept like that steady in my head.

I welcomed the sight of the old stones on my way home; they made me feel like I was chatting with a wise old friend, one who knows better and never gives you bad advice; no matter how my day had been, they comforted me, always there to remind me of what really matters, and whose life I’m supposed to live. You don’t live your life most of the time, have you figured that out yet? You manage expectations, balance priorities, execute plans. The dead were there to teach me how to live.

You can’t share this kind of story with your friends, because you know who lingers around graveyards? Vampires and crazy people. Normal people buy things and then brag to their friends about what they bought, and secretly rejoice when they learn their friends haven’t bought those things yet. They bellyache over career moves, neighborhood resale values, the size of their heinie.

That’s what normal people do at twenty-eight, when society imposes an unwritten obligation on you to feel insecure, and want things that are always just slightly out of your reach, but which you could have gotten if only you were a little better, just like other people always seem to be, something your betters never forget to point out to you.

You can’t share this kind of story with your parents, who question where they went wrong in your upbringing and ask offended how can you be so morbid, after all the hardships they endured on your behalf, just so you’d make something of yourself, for God’s sake, not give them more things to worry about with your creepy death obsession. Death is not to be discussed with your elders. 

Ever.

But the departed smiled kindly at my pointless fretting, and I smiled too and kept our conversation secret, like all the important talks in life must be. You don’t share the wisdom that you want to keep.

There is a special aura around the days that matter.

However long a time has passed, or however many things have happened since, you vividly recall exactly how the tree blossoms smelled that afternoon in early spring, so important it etched every one of its details in your memory.

Live, you goose, the departed asked me. Live, because you’ll wake up one morning an old woman, if you’re lucky, and wonder what happened with your life! Live now! Live tomorrow! Live every day! LIVE!

“But what about the grant application?” I asked, making clear, to their dismay, that I didn’t get the message. One doesn’t, not at that age, not for anything.

How sad is it we all have to repeat the older generations’ mistakes ad infinitum, like a printing error message that keeps replicating automatically in hundreds of copies, wasting the ink and the paper?

One day I stopped passing by that graveyard, because, as the departed had already explained to me, life gets reshaped constantly and the surroundings always change, and you’re always too busy to notice.

One thing about graveyards, though, you can pretty much find one anywhere.