Graveyard Dirt: Two Worlds and In-between

64 Degrees and Cloudy

My grandfather said I was a healer because I kept dried plants in jars in my bedroom. I’d run naked in the woods and wade through Midwestern swamps wrapped in transparent curtains I found in a box in the basement. When I came home I smelled like Horsemint and mud, and my mother swore one day I’d be raped and I wouldn’t have anyone to blame other than myself. It never sank in. I eventually retired the curtains and purged my bedroom closet; years worth of collecting and drying gone in an instant of puberty. It wasn’t my thing, I resigned, it was my mother’s thing.

I saw my grandfather again at my mother’s funeral. I brought him coffee and listened to him reminisce, in that slightly senile veteran sort’ve way. He always had the same three or four stories he’d tell continuously though the day. Every day the stories would change, but he’d relive them the same way, so there was a familiarity to all of his stories, even the ones not yet told.

Sometimes a concept would stick out and he’d repeat the same idea, worded slightly differently every time, like he was working something out with each new variation. Like he was clicking the Rubik’s Cube up one to see if it got him any closer to the overall picture he was seeing in his mind. It’s a haunting, exciting thing to be in the presence of someone who has something, and despite the age, despite the milky cataracts, despite the touch of dementia it’s still there, bright as ever, attracting people like moths to light.

He looked at me and said that I knew. One word was worth a million. You look outward for validation or confirmation, but it was never there for me. It was never me; it was always someone else. (It’s funny, now, looking back, to see how BIG this thing is-was-is, and how it was so influential that it crept into other people’s lives, and shone through them while I stood on the outskirts, just at the edge of their “illumination”.)

Strength can be so fragile when it’s sitting on a cusp of doubt. He looked at me and said that I knew, and I nodded, and my entire life changed. It’s funny how even in silence you can hear the transformation of a curse turn into a blessing, and despite how catastrophic the fall is (how the dust rises from the remnants of the Tower, how you breathe it all in and experience the almost biblical moment in a burst of agonizing emotion (i.e., realization, grief, despair, gratitude, humility, exhalation)) it leaves a promising foundation for the future.

I finally felt set apart for not being obvious. And, three years later, the jars are back, filled with ash, bones and graveyard dirt. It’s funny how these things come full circle, leaving just enough for you to rebuild on.