Urban adventure, 11/24/2011

Nobody visits a grave at night. Except for Buffy, or goths playing at amateur witchcraft. Or a boy and girl who loved the same girl such that they were willing to go on a potentially stupid urban adventure.

The motive: both were nursing a unique, unabated grief that stabs at them at the most peculiar times of the day, giving them no consistent or constant respite. They miss her, and since she does not reply, she does not call back, she does not comment on their numerous post attacks on Facebook, she has left them with no other option for contact.

The inner motive: she was fulfilling a birthday date, he was just crazy like that, and he had issues (insert private jokes here).

All the things that can go wrong started revealing themselves one at a time in quick succession en route to the cemetery. The lady in the flower stall spurred it when she openly discouraged (in a high pitched voice) a visit to the cemetery on a late, dark Thursday night. And then there was rush hour traffic, and their unwillingness to read a map, thus leading to the possibility of getting lost (which happened–they followed the wrong van),  the risk that the cemetery was closed (thank heavens it wasn’t), and then the wide variety of creepy phenomena that roam a place where the dead lie. Add to that the fact that the boy and girl are virtually strangers, and that he drove a dark tinted car.

But they made it, a two-hour drive and a five-minute search later. They marked her gravestone with a pink bouquet and a tall white candle that cast their two lone shadows over the grass and the cement. And then they spent the next two hours talking to her, talking to each other, tsk-ing at the inaccurate lettering on the gravestone, guarding the candle from the wind, planning exit plans to save their hearts and to help them move on.

They don’t know if the exit plans will work, but for that night, the general thought bubble was: “It was really nice spending this late Thursday night with you, love. Until the next time our crazy bones kick us into the next urban adventure.”

 

* Today is your 40th day and we miss you hun. Sending love from my broken heart to you.