The oldest structures in the oldest towns are almost always churches. It’s more important to ensure the salvation of the souls of a town’s occupants than to house them. It lends a certain stability to the place. As the years come and go, people come to the towns, they leave the towns. They go to school, get married, have affairs and children and good times and horrible times, and they leave or they die. The houses get remodelled, repainted, demolished, burned to the ground and rebuilt as convenience stores and department stores, but the church is still there. It has always been there, it will always be there. Its stained glass will remind people of a persevering beauty, the crumbling headstones remind us that everything ends.
I was thinking idly about all of this while I mowed over the lawn of our local church. I thought about all of the people who had taken care of this grass before me, all of the people who would take care of it after I was gone. The latter thought terrified me. No one else could take care of this place. Not like I could. Not with the same care and dedication and discretion. I would mow this lawn, pluck these weeds, putter in these flower beds, until I was buried underneath it like everyone else. I thought about that sometimes, too. I didn’t work on Sundays, of course, but I would watch the service. I would watch the people who came to watch the service. The Church Ladies, with their pastel dresses and their modest heels, smiling to each other and singing hymns as if all the sins of their week could be forgiven in those few blissful hours. They would be buried under the church one day, too. I tried not to let that train of thought go too far, though. Once you imagine someone’s death, it’s hard not to be fascinated by it. To long for it, in a way. Those thoughts aren’t healthy, so I redirect my attention to the service. I wonder if my sins, too, can be washed away once and for all.
Today isn’t a Sunday, though. Today I just mow over the same lawn, like always. I started to think about my past, as I often did on these long afternoons. I thought about all of the things and people I had loved and lost. Most of all, I thought about Angela. Angela was the girl that got away, as cliché as that might sound. She was my high school sweetheart. I’ll never forget how beautiful she was. Our prom night was the best night of my life. She wore this beautiful lavender dress, and black heels that she would soon regret. By the end of the night, her perfect updo had become a gorgeous frenzy of curls, her shoes long abandoned under the bleachers while we danced the night away. I kissed her under the full moon, and she told me that she loved me, with that special little smile she saved just for me. That night, it didn’t matter that school was ending soon. It didn’t matter that she had gotten into some fancy west coast college and I was going to be stuck at home waiting for her. We had each other, and we could believe for a moment that we always would.
When Angela left, she gave me a letter she had written about how our love was infinite, and could rise above the distance and time apart. She would always love me, she would write to me every day, and she would come home and spend Christmas with me. I held back the tears until after she had left, and I really believed in all of it. I believed in us. Over time, though, the letters came less frequently. They were shorter, more like letters you would write your parents than the passionate love letters I had cherished. After Thanksgiving, I got the thickest letter I had seen in weeks. I tore it open, mad with anticipation. This was it, she was going to apologize for being distant, tell me that midterms had been stressful but that she loved me always and forever and would come back to me soon. I was half right. It was an apology for being distant. She had met someone else. She would always love me, and she was still coming home for Christmas. She hoped we could talk things out and be friends. I’ll always wonder if there was anything I could have done differently, any way I could have convinced her to stay with me on that snowy night in December.
Eventually I was jolted out of my memories by the familiar clunk and sputter of the lawn mower. I tried to keep the area clear of rocks, but I wasn’t perfect. I flipped it over, made sure the safety was on the blades, and looked to move whatever had jammed the mower this time. When I looked closer, I felt a pang of nostalgia. Encrusted with mud, hardly recognizable after so many years, Angela’s shoe had become a breeding ground for earthworms. I looked around to make sure that I was unobserved, and hastily reburied the shoe a few feet away. I had to tear up some of the carefully tended lawn, but it could easily be explained away. A particularly stubborn crop of weeds, a half buried stone. Everyone knew I loved those grounds, the idea of anything being done because of negligence was inconceivable.
Burying Angela by the church had just made the most sense. We grew up attending that church. It was important that she be buried with her family, even if there was no ceremony. Even if it had just been me, and my shovel, and my plot of sod in the middle of the night. Everything ends. But the church would always be there. And so would my Angela.
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Credits to: Amerimacabre
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