Ask Me Something
Church graveyard with red building.
Stop. Ask. Listen.
This is all we want. We want someone to stop at our gravesite, look at the marker, and ask the universe who we were. What did we leave behind in this world? How does history remember us, if at all?
We see people on their phones, taking photos, scrolling into oblivion. Does anyone bother searing the names on our tombstones? If they did, they’d find some of us fought in the Revolutionary War. Others were church founders and elders. One of us founded this growing city. Nearby is a family with four buried children finally reunited in death with their ever-grieving parents.
Take a minute to find out about someone. That’s the biggest lesson we can tell the living. We try to give subtle clues when people stop into the cemetery. We rustle the trees, make some leaves fall, creak some branches. We hope the wind will catch the American flags planted outside some of our graves. The flags are near the markers indicating us as war veterans. We want people to walk around, to be curious.
This is all many of us wanted in life as well. To be seen. Heard. Cared for. Asked about. Loved fiercely. Now in death, we are walked by. Talked around. Unheard. Passed over. Forgotten. In death, we sadly expect in, but not in life.
In life, we were all vibrant. Effervescent. Trying. We all wanted to be good friends, lovers, parents, caregivers. Some of us gave our lives in service of this country throughout the centuries. Some of us gave our lives so this country could even exist. It would be nice for someone to realize that as they have a loud conversation at our graveside. And that conversation is never about us.
We wonder if it’s exhausting to be this way. To never be curious. To never ask a question. In our day, we had to converse. Or we had to sit in comfortable silence. We could be bored. Today, we get the sense that people are expendable if the conversations we hear are anything to judge by. People are terse. Curt. Short. Impatient.
Does anyone ask after each other? Where do you go for a cup of sugar? How can people love thy neighbor if they don’t even know who their neighbors are?
If we could implore the living to do one thing it would be ask each other something. Get to know each other. You might like what you see or not. You might want to keep asking questions or walk away. Either way, you have to try. Converse. Learn. Give. Take. Feel.
After all, we are told that we truly die when people stop telling our stories. But how does this manifest in life when people rarely ask each other to share their stories? What then?
