Worst. Person. In. The. World.
Tuesday, February 7th, 2012 by Dawn SummersSigh.
I still feel SO awful about his death and everything that happened between us in the end. Like the worst person in the world! And with Kim Jong Il’s death, there IS a vacancy.
There’s a novel I read once, called The Society or The Secret or the Gift, maybe… doesn’t really matter.
It was about six kids at a prestigious school and they were in a latin club or something. Anyway, one of them dies somehow and the rest cover it up. The author, in telling the story, describes the most chillingly ruthless of the kids as someone who thinks generosity is giving away the chocolates she didn’t like from a box.
I bristled.
That’s *not* generosity?!
I mean, it’s not Oprah opening a school in Zimbabwe, generous, but she could just suck the chocolate coating off the gross coconut ones and throw the rest away instead of offering the whole gross coconut ones to someone who might like gross coconut chocolates! Um… hypothetically, I mean, one could imagine a person making the transition from a chocolate coating-suck-offer to proudly being a more outgoing “you can have any of the non caramel or milk chocolate ones cause I’m allergic to nuts and hate coconut” offerer. And how could such a person not be thought of as generous?! Er…such a *hypothetical* person?!
I was incensed on behalf of the maligned character! I don’t remember now whether she was the murderer or not, but if she was, she likely had good reason! This was a very popular book in the early aughts and I remember complaining to anyone who would listen that this characterization was SO unfair it tarnished the believability of the book. The only person who would listen, a friend from Yale, shrugged and said “okay, I won’t read it.”
I wonder if she’s dead now too.
Sigh.
I spend a lot of time now making sure people aren’t dead. When I’m not doing that, I’m reading articles about people who I know are dead but still can’t really believe are dead. I found out Don’s older brother also died and I was sad that he didn’t tell me. And I was sad for his mother having to bury both her sons. I thought about writing her a letter, but that seemed weird. So I emailed his sister to find out where Don was buried. He’s interred in the cemetery right by my house. And he spent the last three months of his life in and out of a hospital in Brooklyn. That hurt my feelings and made me mad.
I decided to go visit his grave last Sunday. I somehow thought I would just find it by… I dunno, feeling or something, that was…er… I believe the word I’m looking for is “unsuccessful.”
I went back this Saturday armed with a “map,” that the cemetery’s computer prints out after the search engine says “Congratulations! We have found your deceased.”
Awesome.
Except the map was a useless abstract, stenciling of a 200-acre cemetery with an “X” marking the spot where “my deceased” kinda sorta is.
It was the two year anniversary of his burial, so I figured there would be flowers on his grave and started my search at those headstones so adorned. Nothing.
Next, I looked for fancy graves with ornate sculptures cause, well, his family is rich. More nothing.
I looked at grave after grave, old people, young people, couples, babies, but no sign of my deceased. I asked a worker who was laying tarp for an incoming funeral if he could help. He looked at my stenciled map and said I was in the right area, but he couldn’t walk with me to find it cause the hearse with the new body was pulling in.
I walked around some more, idled by the funeral in progress a bit – seemed to be for an elderly woman, and I gave up.
He didn’t let me know where he was when he was alive so I could visit, guess he doesn’t want me visiting his grave either. It’ll have to be enough that I’m in the “right area.”
And then, in true worst person in the world form, I thought, he probably wouldn’t have put in this much effort to find MY grave.
I walked back to my car, opened the trunk and shoved the useless map and flowers inside. As I slammed it shut, a patrol car pulled up and a security guard stepped out.
“Do you need help finding someone, miss?”
I hesitated and then said yes.
I needed help finding my deceased.
I opened the trunk and handed him the mess of crumpled paper. He smoothed it out and said “You’re very close. Come on, follow me.”
Sure enough, I was parked only a few feet away, but the grave is a very simple flatstone. I’d stepped over it at least twice as I read names on the fancier headstones.
He’s buried with his paternal grandparents who died before he was born. There was a rotted wreath with a ribbon saying Merry Christmas. That somehow seemed super depressing.
The stone didn’t say much more than his birth and death dates. Again, also, super depressing.
The memorial pages on the website for the college he taught is filled with notes from his students painting such a bright picture of him as a great professor that I thought that would be on there. HE graduated top of his PhD class at Yale and the history department established an academic prize named after him. Also, not on there. But I guess none of that really matters.
I wondered if he still looked like himself in there. I wondered what his grandparents thought about him moving in since they didn’t even know about him. Then I thought these were really weird things to think, so I stopped thinking them and thought about normal things.
That I was sorry he was dead.
That I wished I had gotten to know the man he became.
That I was very very cold and should have worn a coat.
I don’t know how long I stood at the gravesite, but when I went to thank the security guard he was gone and there was no sign of his car.
Someone, who is a stupidface but shall remain nameless, because in two days when I can’t look at my blog anymore because it’s too sad, I’m going to have to ask him to publish a million guest posts, does not give much credence to my ghost security guard theory and I suppose a coatless black woman wandering around a cemetery for 30 minutes possibly calling out “where are you? ” might have attracted the kind of attention that results in security guards being sent to investigate.
Who can say?
If the worst person in the world can learn to share her gross chocolate covered coconut clumps, anything is possible. Even ghost guards.
These days, I haven’t been sleeping
Staying up, playing back myself leaving
When your birthday passed, and I didn’t call
Then I think about summer, all the beautiful times
I watched you laughing from the passenger side
