Chapter 26 - THE GRAVE THAT STAYED EMPTY
At eighty-four, I visited the cemetery with Leonard and Amelia.
His unused grave plot remained beside Robert.
We had never decided what to do.
Leonard was forty? Years later maybe 52. He said:
“Sell it.”
Cemetery allowed transfer.
Amelia said:
“Keep it.”
“Why?”
“So when you actually die, you can use the coffin properly.”
Leonard laughed.
I slapped his arm lightly.
“Not funny.”
“It’s a little funny.”
It was.
We sold the plot eventually to the cemetery resale program.
No sacred empty space.
Amelia’s former grave had become a small garden area without her name.
She sat beside it.
“Do you feel weird?”
“Yes.”
“Sad?”
“Not exactly.”
“What?”
She looked at the grass.
“I feel sorry for the kid everyone thought was here.”
“That was you.”
“No.”
She shook her head.
“That was the version of me they made.”
I understood.
Mia Cobb.
Dead Amelia.
Hidden granddaughter.
Patient.
Beneficiary.
Witness.
Every adult had given her labels.
Now she was twenty-three and studying veterinary medicine because apparently our family needed someone whose patients could not sign trusts.
Her joke.
Not mine.
She stood.
“Can we go?”
“Yes.”
We left.
No ritual.
May you like
No speech.
Just a cemetery behind us.
