I threw my camera bag over my shoulder and slammed the door of my car, eyeing my jacket through the window. Would I need it? No. No, I could handle the crisp weather without it.
We began to walk towards the graveyard, the sun sinking fast. I looked at her walking beside me in my striped sweater, a smile on her face.
I was glad we had decided to do this.
We walked through the open gate, my tall boots crunching a few of the hundreds of dead leaves on the ground. The floor of the cemetery was alive with the vibrant color of decaying leaves.They were the only things that seemed to get more beautiful in death.
I raised my face to a sky full of storm clouds. The lighting was perfect.
We made our way across the silent sleepers until we came to a beautiful, massive moss covered tree.
“Here. This is the spot,” I said.
My friend began to arrange herself against the bark while I sat my camera bag down against a headstone. I thanked the man who slept below for watching my things. I wondered just how he had died.
As I shot pictures of the natural beauty that is my sister-in-law in a quiet graveyard, I felt my mind begin to wander down it’s own familiar, disturbing paths.
They always led back to him.
Sometimes, something beautifully alive can die before your very eyes, the friend can turn foe, and the streets can run red with the blood of your heart.
There is a man who told me he loved me who hasn’t spoken to me, nor tried to, for 8 months.
He lives across an ocean, fighting for our country as other more honorable men do.
He decided to stop speaking to me a year and a half into our steady, stable relationship.
No warning. No breakup. No phone call. No email.
I remember the weeks I spent worrying something horrible had happened to him when no word came. The months spent simply waiting, putting so much faith in his character. In the person I’d known him to be for 9 years. In the love he swore he had for me.
I remember the night the stark black and white letters forced me to see the person online I didn’t want to believe would be ignoring all of my messages. Relief that he was alright, followed by confusion, then an overwhelming ocean of hurt led to a cold night of sitting completely still, not knowing how to respond to a silent online presence who wouldn’t acknowledge mine.
Not knowing how to move.
How to act on the knowledge that all of my attempts at communication were simply being ignored.
Yet still, I waited.
No big fights were ever had. There was no way I could ever have seen this coming, whatever “this” was…is.
A cold wind blew a few bright leaves across my brown boots, and she laughed – kicking a pile of them into the air. I snapped a picture at the same instant, as the wind carried the dying notes of her laughter across the headstones and through the pine trees.
I’ve pleaded with him to give me some kind of explanation. After 9 years of friendship, I’ve wanted so badly to hear his side of things. 8 months later, I still haven’t. He has never once, ever, tried to contact me, even though his last words to me were, “I’ll call you right back”.
He has told others that he has tried to contact me. That I have ignored his efforts, and so he has given up.
This is a lie.
My phone number hasn’t changed. My email address is the same. My home has not changed locations.
I have been here.
I have been waiting.
He is out there. I can still see him, even though he pretends he can’t see me. Pictures show a certain ugly truth. Explorations, sweat, alcohol, men, women.
I know he knows what he’s done back home to every relationship he once had with those within my family, disregarding the fact that he was once almost a member. His silence continues to speak volumes.
He has lit a fire beneath every bridge he’s found, without a care for those standing near the flames.
If this is how he loves, God help those he hates.
A golden brown leaf blew behind me, and my thoughts followed it, and suddenly I was only 16, he was 18. He had come to our church as a college student, and we had adopted him into our home as a “lost boy” while he lived on campus.
9 years of memories. I’d cherished our friendship more than anything.
All the youth trips. All the midnight movie releases, costumes included. All the stupid videos we’d made together. All the music gigs. All the times he’d fixed my computer. All the group hang outs. The road trips. The camping trips. All the life we had experienced together – as friends.
The person I had known before was as dead and gone as the ones in the autumn covered graveyard.
Gone.
That person would never come back from the grave. And even if he did, the damage that he’s done can never be repaired. The truth of his character is out there, and he can never take these last 8 months back.
I wish I could bury his memory, I wish I could scatter the ashes of every recollection I have of him.
I don’t want them anymore.
Not after what he’s done.
The icy wind bit into my exposed fingers as I took another picture. The Northern breeze blew a red dreadlock out of place, and I bent forward to tuck it back under her hat. She shrieked when my frozen finger touched her face.
39 degrees. I didn’t mind, the lighting was so perfect, each moment was like a gift.
A shape in the distance developed into my wild haired brother, and his arm raised to us in a wave. Warmth spread through my heavy heart. I wasn’t the only one who had lost someone. When he left me, he left us all.
My own brother has tried to reach out to him, but has received nothing but the same deathly cold silence I’ve gotten, even as we continue to see his active Facebook.
My brother loved him like a brother.
My brother should have chosen a better best man.
The three of us stayed in the cemetery until the sun was gone, the mist creeping between the trees and around the headstones like icy fingers seeking the warmth of our live bodies. I soaked in their companionship like Vitamin D.
We finally packed up the camera bag and headed for the ever darkening gate.
I looked back at the beautiful mossy tree we’d left behind, and I realized I already missed it as I walked away.
I wonder if he ever missed me as he walked away.
It doesn’t matter.
He never bothered looking back.
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