Graveyard
by Prasanthi Ram
On the morning of your birthday, I took you to the graveyard.
The one that faced the ocean. "Quite morbid," I had said when you took me there for the first time several, several autumns ago. Even then, the sloped land had been filled with headstones. It had taken us a steep climb to find open space to lay upon. Lush grass, fertilised by once-beloved flesh, cushioned the back of our skulls as we watched clouds dance to the live music of gentle afternoon waves. You, then twenty, had been reading a poem by Sharon Olds to the dead: "My mother... thought...I was Possessed". I barely paid attention. I was more uneasy about being amongst unhappy spirits with unfinished business. At the end of our extended stay (upon your gentle insistence), you confessed that you were happy to be there.
That it made you feel alive. Despite my superstitions, I smiled.
To get to the graveyard, one had to take an eight-hour red eye across seas, over a vast desert before one reached the city. After which, one would have to ride a train out of the airport, then catch a bus to the beach. Any practical person would have said that it was unnecessary to make the same trip twice just to visit the graveyard again. Dead people were the same everywhere anyway. What was there to see? But you thought differently and for you, I agreed.
Afraid that people might notice what I was about to do, I left the hotel early that morning, even before the bin chickens got to the garbage outside. The bus ride was relatively quiet, aside from the one gaggle of excitable school children and an elderly woman who played Christian music aloud on her phone while smelling like marijuana. Once the road ahead broke into a seashore, I alighted to the pleasant assault of ocean air. Because the morning was chilly, I tightened my hold over you, then began to hike along the coast.
Though the sun was just rising, there were morning joggers. Early-bird surfers. An elderly couple out for a stroll. A kid busy burying his legs under toppled pails of sand. Then us. A woman, who was running in from the other end of the coast, gave us a serious once-over when she sped past. Maybe she thought we were an odd pair. Well, I thought so too.
Soon the hike turned into nature's equivalent of an intense stair climber at the gym. Instantly, my lack of stamina betrayed me. I wondered why I had said yes in the first place. We were not family members. Or lovers. We were just two friends.
But two old friends with trenches of history and honesty under us. Three decades since we were children.
Maybe that was why I kept climbing.
When you first told me at twenty-five that you were certain you would end your own life someday, I should have been shocked. Instead, I accepted it as if it were fact. It was the unwavering conviction in your voice — it impressed me. It could have been the liquor that had blurred my perceptions, but I distinctly recall the way your confession rested comfortably between us like a third friend; it was in the shape of a soft fleece blanket that draped itself over us. Unlike other well-meaning friends, I did not attempt to convince you otherwise or pretend I had not heard you. I respected you too much to do either. Instead I simply said, "Okay."
Maybe I should not have.
It was the lawyer of your estate who called to inform me of your wishes two weeks ago. But I could not process her words. I was still reeling from the thought that you had planned a will. At our age. As late as we were, neither of us even had children. There was still time. There was no one fighting over our so-called estates. We clearly were not at the age to die yet. I tried to decline. Sure, it was what you wanted but it was too much to accept. Why me of all people, I wished to ask you though I already knew the answer. That it would always be me that you would choose for this otherwise disconcerting task. Because only with me did the task make sense, its tender meaning stitched into my memory. "It wouldn't be fair to the family," I said over the phone. But you had pre-empted even that. Your lawyer was unfazed: "Don't worry. They've already agreed."
I paused for a minute and realised I was completely alone. That made sense. By that point of the extensive trail, most people would have made a U-turn. Most, but not us. Unlike our first visit ages ago, the sky was clear today — an undisturbed, seamless blue that we could have never seen back home. A sudden gust of coastal wind almost broke my hold over you. I clutched onto you tighter and continued walking.
Once the slender pale body you had lived your short life in returned from the crematorium, your Buddhist mother had you poured into a light jade urn with a circular base. Her eyes were dry when she passed you to me. You went from an aged mother's familiar cradle to an old friend's clumsy embrace. I felt ashamed. I wanted to apologise to her for what I was about to do — scatter her beloved child in a foreign land. But she smiled, then retreated into your family home without looking back. Maybe I was not the only one. Maybe she understood you more than you had realised. That afternoon, I left your home in tears.
Arriving at the foot of the graveyard, I laughed in defeat. I was exhausted by this point: newly arthritic knee-joints aching, sunlight lashing down the back of my neck because of my habitual hunch. Briefly, I was tempted to just let you go there. But there was a chance I would be haunted by your restless spirit. Sighing, I trudged upslope and sat on the first open patch of grass I could spot. You, cold jade, rested on my lap like a placated child. After catching several breaths, I read you the same Sharon Olds poem you once read to me — albeit with mistakes because I was longsighted now. The nearby headstones seemed to be listening too. This time, I registered the words properly, though it upset me that I had never asked what you thought of the poem. Then we watched the ocean together. Older and acutely aware of my mortality, the vastness of the blue unknown was arresting. How far would I have to go to meet you again? Would we ever meet again? You with no God, and me with too many to count with my fingers. That day you had asked if our afterlives would be different. I still did not know the answer. I still do not. Embracing you again, I made my way back down to the coast. I sang you a quiet birthday song. The wind joined us. I opened your urn. I stood still, bearing witness, until the last of you became the world.
Prasanthi Ram is a Creative Writing PhD candidate at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Her short stories have been published in The Tiger Moth Review, The Willowherb Review, and anthologised in Food Republic: A Singapore Literary Banquet by Landmark Books. While working on her debut collection of short stories, she is also a regular reviewer for Singapore Unbound's SP Blog. Most recently, she co-founded and is the fiction editor of Mahogany Journal, an online literary journal dedicated to South Asian anglophone writers born or based in Singapore.
