remembering

I realized as we were pulling out of my childhood hometown today on our way to my sister's new town that I had not gone to the cemetery this trip.

One of my Christmas rituals is to visit the cemeteries. My mother's parents and a host of friends and relatives are buried in one and my father's parents and a few other relatives are buried in another.

It must be said that I enjoy going to cemeteries as you may have noticed. I have included famous cemeteries on my vacation trips and routinely visit the cemetery in my neighborhood though I don't personally know any one buried there. I find them calming in a way that I am not sure I can describe fully.

This trip, though, with no car of my own and a severely limited timetable, the trip to the cemetery didn't happen.

I feel sad and guilty. As a child, we would regularly visit my grandparents, clean their area, bring them flowers, say a little prayer. My parents didn't like to linger at the cemetery, but they seemed to have a commitment to the visit. I felt close to those grandparents, all gone from the earth by the time I was 12, in an odd ethereal way. In the cemetery, those grandparents could be whatever I wanted them to be and I was whoever they want me to be. It's an odd way to look at it, I am sure, but there you have it.

A classmate, friend and old crush died twenty years ago this Christmas. He is on my regular visit cycle. Every year at Christmas, and sometimes other times of the year too, I spend a little time with Jaime at his grave. I feel guilty about not spending more time thinking about him and the waste it was for him to die when we were 17. Certainly at some times of my life, his death has weighed heavier on me than others. It was always comforting to go to his grave and find it decorated. I was reassured that though I may be far away there were others remembering and loving him from closer by. Last year, at his grave, there were little or no decorations. I wondered if his family might have moved. I was sad to think they had moved on emotionally, though you couldn't really fault them for it. How many years would it take to not feel guilty that this is where his life had led him when our lives had gone on? I wept this year recalling that it had been 20 years. He's been dead longer than he was alive and he is still that fresh young face in my memory.

To be completely honest, Jaime lives on in my life not only out of guilt or sad nostalgia; his spirit is frequently present with me. I know that he has long been one of my guides, watching over me with my grandparents. Truthfully he watches my life more like a soap opera than as a sage offering advice, but when I remember, thinking about his presence lightens my load.

Perhaps that is why it was all the more sad for me to not have made it to visit him this year. He doesn't forget me and I don't want him to think that I have forgotten him.

Merry Christmas, Jaime.