The Garden of the Dead

My first walk through a graveyard was during my early days as a bank clerk. I found the place horrible; the lonely road from one end to the other, the eerie crosses on either side, and the bitter cold in the evening air, all added to produce a kind of evil hue. I had vowed never to take that route again, but I think I was forced to take it twice more. Each time there was the same morbid hate about which I still wonder.

Years passed. I married, had a son, educated him, and he went to America for a job. Gradually a lifetime rolled by. I was now a pensioner living in my home village with my wife Martha. Our son became an occasional visitor, until finally he married an American girl and settled there for good.

And so Martha and I welcomed old age with peace and joy. We strolled along the mountain roads and she enjoyed the evening breeze and the evergreen flora. One day we decided to go picnicking over the hills. Martha was delighted. She packed some tea and snacks as I took out the car. We set out just after lunch and had parked in a lush green area, near the summit, by early evening. As she laid out the tea, I walked around breathing the crisp mountain air.

Reaching a small ridge, I suddenly saw a beautiful burial ground sprawled before me with several crosses mushrooming out of the grass. Little wild flowers formed random designs on the green carpet of grass. Far beyond was a valley studded with small huts.

I told Martha that our picnic spot was in the neighborhood of a cemetery. Curiously, she seemed delighted. “It is not every evening that you have tea with the dead,” she said. In fact she made me move over the things to the ridge so that we could actually see the graveyard – and the valley beyond – as we had our tea.

I still see her in my mind, standing with a cup in her hand, staring with feeling at the crosses. “This is not a graveyard,” she said. “This is the garden of the dead.” I agreed with Martha. People are born, live a life, and then die. They are buried and then merge with the soil. Little flowers, ever so lively and beautiful, spring up in the same soil. And the beauty and joy of a lifetime lives on.

Suddenly she took my hand. “You know, Mark, these people lying here… we are closer to them more than we are to the living.” She was probably thinking of our son. “When we die there will be two more crosses with only the grass and the flowers to separate them.”

The breeze was getting a little cold. I said: “You think we’ll die together?” It was stupid to ask that just then. “Do you doubt it?” She asked with tears in her eyes. “It will be one such evening and they will bring us both up here, all the way from the village, and they will bury us side by side.”

“And the flowers will live on for us,” I whispered, embracing her against the cold. “For ever and ever,” she smiled assuredly.
Fourteen years have passed. It is three-and-a-half years since Martha left this world. Her prophesy has come true; little flowers have sprouted all over her. There is a vacant place next to her. I mean to fill it up soon and let the flowers live on. As for me, I’ll follow Martha into the timeless world of silence and bliss.