Momento Mori

I grasp the concrete angel’s outreached hand, close my eyes and feel the weathered cement, spongy and calloused. I look at her face, searching for something defined or intricate in her carved expression, but I know she hasn’t been remarkable in years. She seemed so monumental from fifty feet away, but as I lace my fingers through hers, I know that her face has long since seeped with the rainwater into the grave she guards. I squint at the dates on the grave. She is a century old, can you believe, I tell him. She's older than that, he says. He bothered to do the math in his head. He has never been to a cemetery before. I wonder if he is scared. We walk apart. The coarse, cold feeling of her concrete hand lingers on my fingertips, and I know I’m alive. The supple, warm feeling of his upper back lingers on my fingertips, and I know I’m alive. We walk apart. I sometimes raked his back with the pads of my fingers, finally resting my hand at his waist as we walked. Now we walk apart, admiring a gaudy mausoleum modeled after the Pantheon, with marble Doric columns and pediments. We peer through the padlocked gate of the house at the dead family locked within the walls. We don’t think about them. We think about the broken glass on the floor, of the dead rose stems, of the lone beer can. It’s been in there a while, look at the rust, I tell him.

I’ve been searching for this cemetery for seven years. I drove past it once when it was raining and I longed to go inside. It was raining and her face was seeping into the guarded grave and I didn’t even know. We trudge across the dry lawns and look at the headstones together. Let’s go over there, he says. He isn’t scared, and we walk apart. We stay a while. When we leave, I hear the bells of the church chime. He doesn’t hear them, he says. I tried to feel some kind of goodbye as we walked apart.