| From Chicken Soup for the Soul: A Book of Miracles | |
| By Bobbie Clemons-Demuth |
He will yet fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with shouts of joy.
~Job 8:20-22
~Job 8:20-22
It had been over a year since I'd been to the Ten Mile countryside cemetery. I used to visit once a week but as time had passed and my heartache lessened, so did my visits. As I stepped out of the car, the hot summer sun blazed against the nape of my neck. In the distance I could hear a lawnmower and I smelled the fresh-cut grass. Across the road a few straggling cows halted their lumbering march towards the feeding trough to stare at me. I stared back until the smell of cow dung assaulted my nose, then I turned and continued on through the front gate and into the well-manicured graveyard.
A strange mixture of emotions churned inside me. Since it had been so long since I'd been here, a part of me was excited to say hello to my old friends, while the other part remembered the grief that I'd carried so heavily for so long. But I was there to pay my respects, so I swallowed hard and marched on, one foot in front of the other, towards the three graves that I used to visit so often.
That's when I spotted the sprinkler. A very large, farm-like sprinkler stood four feet tall, rotating in a circular motion to water the cemetery. Round and round it went, shooting long, straight, ten-foot shots of water every thirty seconds or so. It looked awfully close to where I was headed so I stopped and stood watching to see just how far it shot and just how close it sprayed to where I was going. I watched it go round four to five times before determining I would be safe. Its spray could not reach me at the three gravesites.
As I stepped forward I unconsciously found myself following my old routine. I always started at my boyfriend Shannon's grave, then took two steps to the right to his mother Becky's, then lastly, three steps back to his grandmother "Nanny's" grave. At Shannon's I started with my usual greeting -- "Hello baby. How ya doin' up there? It's a really beautiful day down here today," -- and whatever other small talk I could think of to delay, for just a few more seconds, what I knew was coming... that same old, familiar, sadness. I lowered my head as I felt it rising up towards my chest and that second it happened. BAM! I was shot with a blast of water from the sprinkler. Yes, that very same sprinkler that I had just watched go round and round shooting short of my spot every time.
I shouldn't have been surprised really. Shannon had always been a comical person so he would do something like that. But he was dead after all. When he was alive though, he could make people laugh no matter where we were. He could even make perfect strangers laugh, and did so with ease. He could have the person at the other end of the drive-thru speaker laughing while ordering fast food, or people in line at the grocery store, bank, video store, anywhere. In a matter of minutes he'd have the clerk busted up laughing.
I remember one night he decided to go down to the neighborhood tavern in his bathrobe and slippers just for fun. Well, as usual, everybody there loved it and at two in the morning he paraded home with half a dozen people following him from the bar. They danced, laughed and sang for hours!
He was twenty-three when I was eighteen. He was my first true love. We planned to be married and start a family -- the whole nine yards. So naturally I was devastated when the state trooper came to my door and told me he'd been in a fatal accident. Even more devastated were his uncles and his very dear Nanny. They shared a very special bond since both Shannon's mother and father had died before he was nineteen. It was so hard on Nanny that she died three months after Shannon.
So at the age of eighteen I began this routine, one that hopefully not too many eighteen-year-olds have... once a week I went to the Ten Mile countryside cemetery and visited my three friends. I always walked in with churning emotions. I always went to Shannon's grave first. I always started with a short greeting, always lowering my head as I felt the sadness well up inside me. Then I moved on to his mother and grandmother's graves.
But never, ever, on any such occasion had something like this happened to me.
I was a bit startled at first, thinking that it must have been some kind of fluke. So I stayed exactly where I was, not moving an inch, and turned towards the sprinkler to watch it go around. It didn't hit or even come close to me again. After a minute or so, I turned back to Shannon with another short greeting, and lowered my head as the sadness filled my heart. BAM! I was shot with water again. Mopping my wet face, I looked up and watched the offending sprinkler go around without a hit. I shook my head in disbelief and stepped to the right to Shannon's mother's grave.
I stood for a moment, watching the sprinkler go around, spraying far away from me, then said, "Hello Becky." As I lowered my head, the sadness began to fill me and would you believe it? BAM! Wet again!
This time I chuckled to myself, wondering how in the world this was happening. I scanned the entire graveyard trying to see who could be doing this to me. A real practical joker this must be, picking on a grieving person. Who could do something like this? But there was no one else around. Just me, the cows across the road and that darn sprinkler!
I still had one last grave to visit, directly behind Shannon's. I shook my head and chuckled my way back there, watching the sprinkler go round far from me. I said my hello, then lowered my head and... BAM! Soaked again!
Exasperated, I threw my hands into the air and yelled, "Well, I guess you guys don't want me to be sad today!" I laughed and giggled and shook my head as I walked right past the sprinkler, without getting hit, right out of the cemetery and had myself a fantastic rest of the summer day.
Now when I visit the cemetery I come not with sadness but with gratitude for having loved such a wonderful family.
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