Yesterday, which would have been JP's 36th birthday, I found myself driving with no particular purpose in mind. And so I was actually surprised when I found myself at the cemetery.
I am not one of those grave-visiting types. I went through a short phase where I was; then I wasn't. Then I had no car and couldn't have gotten out there, even if I wanted to, and so it had been a very long time since I'd been out there.
The cemetery is near my mother's house, and I've had cause to drive past it several times when running errands for her in her car. I've resisted the momentary temptation every time, for the same reason I don't drive past the site of our old apartment anymore, or down that stretch of North Avenue that was once the center of our world. I tell myself it's time to move on, not to wallow in the past. I remind myself of how far I've come, as if that was any comfort.
But yesterday I was prepared to wallow, a little, even though I didn't know it, even though the cemetery wasn't where I'd set out to go when I left the house.
The last time I was at the cemetery, there was still no gravestone there. I had lost touch with his family, but I knew there were some financial issues, at least on his mom's side of things. It was always a source of shame to me that I wasn't sure exactly where his grave was; I remembered images from the day of the funeral, but nothing precise.
Well, that was probably a year or two ago, at least, and this time, I found it immediately.
His family did him proud, really. I suspect the old animosity between his parents was probably responsible for the existence of TWO stones, not just one. One was the flat-against-the-ground kind, and the other was the above-ground kind. He's buried next to his grandmother, who died two years later. I was with CR already when she died, all fucked-up in my own special way, and I didn't hear about her death for maybe two years after that. She was a wonderful lady, and I wish I had kept in closer touch with her--with the whole family, in fact. At the time I thought it would be more compassionate to just fade away, because I was not handling JP's death well at all--every time I talked to them, I would be a crying mess. They didn't need that, I figured at the time; now, I don't know whether I made the right decision or not. I do know I miss them too. At one point I remember saying to someone, "You know, when JP died I lost three families: his family, the family he and I had just by ourselves, and the one we would have had together someday."
Seeing his name carved there with the dates--it brought it home, somehow, as if living without him for these past 9 1/2 years hasn't done that often enough. There's a guitar carved above his name, which made me smile. His music was everything to him.
And yeah, I cried; and yeah, I said some sentimental stuff which I will not repeat; and when I got back in the car and started the engine, the radio was playing one of our many songs. And then the next song was another one, and the next--songs I hadn't heard in months if not years, all attached to some memory of that summer.
I laughed through my tears and said "all right, all right, cut it out."
I drove home, back to my house and my man and my cats and my life. I was ready to have a long talk with LJ when I got there, but then someone came over, and the basketball game was on, and...
Things go on as usual, and the mundane generally wins. And in a few months I will be 35 years old, still stuck in a long-ago summer.
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