Graveyard Visit

by Bailey Lint

I shut my car door, the red paint reflecting a mildly hot setting sun. The smell of freshly cut grass and hot pavement fills the air. My wedge heels are slightly unstable on the pebbled tar, and I know once I reach the uneven ground in the grass it’ll be worse. I reach down, careful not to expose myself by letting my floral dress slip up, and unbuckle the shoes. Once I step into the grass, I slip my sweat-sticky feet out of the heels and pick them up, letting them dangle from my fingertips in my left hand. My right hand is holding a single yellow rose and an unopened bottle of raspberry hard seltzer.

I don’t remember exactly where the tombstone is, so it takes me a few minutes to find it. Once I do, I set my shoes down beside the stone slab and place the rose on the base of it. I read the etched-in name.

Jarrod Lint.

Taking a deep breath, I pop the cap off the seltzer. I can’t bring myself to drink it yet. I stare at the tombstone, reading the engraved text of “Beloved brother and son” before heaving another heavy sigh and sitting down in the grass, sweeping my legs out from under me in a ladylike manner. I lean on one hand and place the bottle in front of me on the cool grass.

Part of me regrets coming here, and part of me is grateful that I did. I don’t ever know what to say in these situations, but a part of me feels obligated to come. I also feel like I don’t make these visits as often as I should. I’d hate for him to feel like he’s been abandoned, like so many of the other lonely tombstones in the graveyard.

I let myself sit in silence for a little, almost creating an awkward tension between me and the stone. I close my eyes and listen to the bugs buzzing around the graveyard, the distant sound of cars driving by, and my steady breathing. I pay attention to the way it feels to fill my lungs with air and empty them. The sun feels warm on my face, a welcome change from the bitter cold winter we’d just had. Spring came late this year, which was a little disappointing for my last semester of college. I had hoped I’d be outside hiking and hammocking with friends more but had to settle for indoor movies and game nights. There isn’t anything wrong with those activities, I just appreciate the outdoors. I feel like he would, too.

Opening my eyes, I almost expect to see a young boy with blond hair sitting in front of me or next to me. There’s not, though.

I wonder if his hair would still be blond like mine was when I was his age, or if it would have grown into a light brown as mine did, or a dark brown like our mother’s and little brother’s. Maybe he would have had our dad’s genes. Our dad, whose once-blond hair hasn’t been anything but gray since I was 15 years old.

You would’ve been 18 years old then, I think.

It’s probably about time I said something.

“Hi Bubby,” I say with a slightly strained smile. I let the silence hang for a moment again before continuing. “Guess what I did today. I graduated.”

I imagine a cheer or a pat on the back from him. The wind blows from behind, pushing some of my long bangs in my face. Tucking them behind my ear, I look down at the bottle in my hands.

“I brought something for us to celebrate. I hope you like raspberry,” I announce and pour some of the drink onto the ground in front of me. It feels a little weird to be pouring alcohol over a four-year-old’s grave, but I pretend like he’s aged up under there so it’s okay for him to drink now.

You’d be 24 now. Way above the legal drinking age.

After I’m done pouring some for him, I take a sip of the beverage. The liquid is still a little cool from sitting in the AC of my car, but not as refreshing as I’d hoped. As I’ve gotten older I realized that I don’t like sugary drinks as much as I used to. I don’t lean anywhere near hard liquor like whiskey or tequila, but I also can’t drink my sweet little wine coolers anymore. Aging up sucks.

I huff a laugh to myself. What an awful, selfish thought to have in a graveyard.

Lifting my eyes back up to the headstone, I meet the engraved smiling face of my forever four-year-old brother. He had such a sweet smile, his few front teeth so small but his grin so kind. Such big, crinkly eyes, too. I long to know what it would look like now if he smiled. I wonder if he would still smile at me like that. I like to imagine he’d always be my big brother, my keeper, my protector. My mom likes to tell me how when we were little, him in his toddler phase and me just entering infancy, he’d always call me “his baby.” I wonder how long that would have lasted. I wonder if it would have been some inside joke between us, like how my little brother Jack used to call me “Sissy,” and we joke about it now.

I once met a medium in an occult class I took during my freshman year of college. She was a nice, middle-aged lady with carefully hair-sprayed hair and manicured nails. She told us stories of different people that she had seen and interacted with on the other side. Her stories were interesting; she claimed to have met a man in black, once. I talked to her after class because of my interest in the supernatural and occult. I also had a question that I’d never been able to ask anyone before and never thought I could.

When someone dies, do they stay the age they died at or do they age, as the living do?

She told me it’s, however, they, the spirits, want to appear. Or maybe she said something about how they appear as we want them to appear. Either way, she made an offhand comment about how she could tell that I had someone watching over me; some protective energy. I had someone looking out for me. Of course, with my question and class discussion that day, I was thinking of Jarrod, and her comment left me with an unmatched warm feeling in my chest that I haven’t felt before or since that moment.

Afterward, on my way home from that class, I looked in the window of a parked car I was passing and spotted a head of blond hair on a tall figure walking next to me. When I looked over, there was a space next to me, and no tall, blond boy. Despite everything I know about human psychology after studying it for four years, I believe that was him to this day.

A similar instance happened when I was a kid. I don’t remember this, but my mom tells me that a few weeks or months after Jarrod passed away, I, two years old, was talking to someone in the backseat of her car. When she asked who I was speaking to, I told her it was Jarrod.

Kids are supposed to be more connected with the other side for whatever reason, but I wish as adults we had the same abilities. What I would give to speak to him now, rather than his stone portrait. Holding eye contact with his unblinking likeness always makes me sad, so I have to look away.

There’s something about the way his eyes are frozen, looking like he knows there isn’t much time. He couldn’t have known, and maybe I just look too far into it as I do with most things, but there’s always been something sad about his eyes to me. The way his little smile doesn’t quite reach them all the way.

“Sorry to think about you like that, Bubby. It’s probably not very nice, huh?” I say out loud to him as if he can hear my thoughts. I take a steadying breath and bring my head up, turning my unfocused gaze toward a tree in the distance to the left. A moment passes before I find my voice. “I wish you could’ve been there. At my graduation. At the ceremony.”

I can feel my throat start to get thick and have to pause.

“I know you would’ve supported me the whole way. I hope you’re proud of me.” I swallow, trying to clear up the space in my throat, and then remember I have a drink in my hand. I swallow again, this time tasting sugar and raspberry. I want to tell him about the grades I got, my GPA and how proud of myself I am for it, and the honors I was given, but it all feels too trivial and I’m left unsure of what to say. This always happens. I worry that on one hand, anything I say won’t be meaningful enough, or on the other hand, that I’m not saying enough.

I want to tell him about how my partner came down for the ceremony and how that meant a lot to me. I want to tell him that Jack was there, supporting me. How our little brother’s support was one of the most important sources of support to me. I want to tell him about how Mom cried so much, it made me cry a little too despite promising myself I’d try my best not to. I want to tell him how even Dad got a little emotional. I want to tell him about how sad I am to leave my friends and say goodbye to them. I want to talk to him about my fears of starting life as a full-fledged adult, and how I’m terrified of finding a job that will make me happy and enough money at the same time. I want to tell him I’m stressed about potentially moving in with my partner in the future, whether I feel like that’s the right move or not, and about how I’ll miss my apartment despite how loud and obnoxious it could sometimes be. I want all the advice he could have to offer me as my big brother.

But I know there will be no conversation, so I remain silent to avoid the pain of no answer.

I used to imagine that I could feel when my loved ones were with me. There’s a small part of me that still believes this because of an incident when I swear I felt my deceased grandmother kiss my head. My Mimi passed away when I was young; somewhere around ten, I want to say. When I was grieving her late at night, I remember reminiscing about how we used to sleep together at her house which smelled like mildew and cigarette smoke. In the darkness of the bedroom, we’d try to give each other a kiss goodnight. One of us would always miss, landing a kiss on the other’s nose, cheek, or sometimes unfortunately, eye. Fits of laughter usually followed after each attempted kiss goodnight. I remember wanting to feel my grandma’s kiss one last time, and I swear she was listening because I felt the placement of lips on my forehead in the darkness of my room, all alone.

I think Jarrod is with me now, as I sit and stare at his dedicated space with tears brimming in my eyes.

“If you’re here–” I stop because saying it out loud makes me feel ridiculous. Yet, I suck it up and begin again. “If you’re here, just know I would’ve loved for you to come to see me graduate. I would’ve loved your guidance, and though I’m sure we would bicker as all siblings do, I know your approval would’ve meant the world to me. And I think you would approve. I imagine you’d be happy for me. I wish things would’ve turned out differently– I wish the marrow would’ve worked, I wish–”

My voice cracks and I stop. I let out a sigh and simultaneously stop fighting back the tears. I know my makeup will get ruined and I know my eyes will turn puffy, but I don’t care.

“I just wish you were here.”

And though it might just be the sun, a warm breeze, or even my imagination, I think I feel a small pair of arms wrap around me, and that warmth fills my chest again.