Making a statement

Skull carving captured in a cemetery in Munich, Germany.

You can miss me if you’re not looking, but once you see me, I am hard to forget.

That’s how I felt when I was alive - a wallflower waiting to bloom with a little bit of attention. Even in death, my marker is low to the ground but so distinct that almost everyone who catches the sunlight glinting off it slows down. They all do some form of the same maneuver that goes something like this: stop, pause to wonder if it’s really a stone skull they’re seeing, walk closer, hike their pants (if they’re wearing long pants; women who smooth their skirts also fascinate me but for other reasons), crouch down with sigh, and touch the recesses in the carving. They trace the lines on my face. Sometimes they wonder aloud if this is my real skull. Of course not. Mine was never this beautiful.

I grew up and came of age in Munich when it was a bustling world city, full of culture, life, a vibrancy. Richard Wagner was my childhood friend. Yes, that same guy who went onto write some of the world’s best-known operas once skinned his knee so badly my mom cuddled him while he wept and bled. I sneered on, partly jealous, partly angry. Had my mother ever held me that closely while I cried?

As we got older, we immersed ourselves in the scientific and cultural revolution. Somehow I still faded into the background at parties. Women told me I was handsome. And once I let them close enough to see my “piercing blue eyes,” my “cheekbones leaning toward the Gods,” and my “impish smile,” they felt a need to touch. To feel. With my consent, they put their hands on my face. Traced my eyes. My bone structure. My lips. My chest. That’s what I mean when I say once someone got to know me, I was hard to forget.

And not just physically either. Sure, I was tall and striking. The first part was a fact. The second was subjective, but the attention I received from women and men led me to believe I was graced with a vessel people found captivating. Too bad I could never fully break free from my turmoiled insides. I never let myself believe I was anything other than a physical specimen without a soul to offer the world. I delved into my studies, became a successful scientist. I figured I had time to find a wife, but World War 1 broke out, and everything shattered.

Suddenly, nobody saw me again. I knew if the government found me, I was going to have to kill another man. That was not in my makeup. So, I hid. Tucked away from bunker to attic to abandoned building. I lost my family. My friends. I receded into darkness. After the war ended and the sanctions began, I died young of what I think was a broken heart. The man I was to become was stunted, cut off, ruined, bombed out like my childhood home. Like my childhood hopes and dreams. I died when I was 52, alone. With no hands on my face, or without tentacles into my soul.

I think that is why my friend Richard made sure my gravestone was a standout. Others in the cemetery near me do not have the same shine and luster. That is why the light catches my face. People stop. Stare. Rub. Caress. Feel. In death, I seem to have the connection I never got in life. Never felt I deserved. Even these many decades later, people walk away from me with their imprints on my heart. I never tire of the attention. I get to live out my extroverted fantasies in death. I get a connection I never experienced in life.

I am glad I am hard to forget. Every crack, crevice, and strain on the skull represents the elements and people rubbing, feeling, eroding, growing, changing me. I close my eyes and let the sensations sink in. I pretend to feel their every touch on my skin. I imagine them tracing my eyes. Cheeks. Lips. Hair. I want their attention. Crave it. It brings me out of my shell and into a life I only dreamt of having before my fears and men ripped it all away too soon.

In death, I am always who I wanted to be in life.