They emerged onto a bustling city street. Looking toward the east, Rob could see the broad blue expanse of Lake Michigan nearby—only a few blocks. White sparkles danced on the water’s surface, and he was so tempted to say, “Let’s just head to the beach,” but this was Jasper’s day, Jasper’s show, and Rob knew he should let him run things.
They turned away from the lakefront and began heading west.
“Where are we going, anyway?”
“You’ll see.”
“YOU BROUGHTme to a cemetery?” Rob stood beside Jasper across from the front gates of Rosehill Cemetery, peering up at the limestone front gate. It was a massive castellated Gothic structure, and Rob could almost envision a castle rising up beyond this entrance. Hell, the gate itself looked as though it shouldbepart of a castle.
“I brought you to one of my favorite places in Chicago that just happens to be a cemetery,” Jasper explained. “It’s beautiful in there. Lots of famous people buried there, lots of gorgeous memorials and crypts. Swans. Ponds. Green grass and trees. And it’s all right in the middle of the northwest side of the city. You head through those gates and there’s peace. Quiet. Serenity. If you allow it.” Jasper smiled. Rob could see the innocent pleasure Jasper took from being here.
And Rob didn’t want to spoil that naïve bliss commenting on how odd it was to take him to a cemetery as the first stop on his sightseeing tour of Chicago, especially in light of the fact that it was the recent death of someone they both loved that had brought them together.
So he kept those thoughts to himself.
“I’ll give you a little walking tour.” Jasper led him toward the Gothic portal. He pointed out a set of old stone stairs, covered in vines. Rob wondered if it was a kind of monument in itself, perhaps trying to make a statement about the relentless encroachment of life even in the face of death.
“Those steps used to lead up to a train station on the Chicago Northwestern line. It was where funeral cars on the train could be met. At least that’s what I always heard. Hasn’t been used, obviously, for that purpose in years.”
“Wow,” Rob marveled.
They stepped inside the cemetery proper, and Rob wondered if the change he noted was only in his imagination. But it did seem cooler suddenly, the sounds of traffic and trains diminishing.
The sun beat down on them, but Rob felt cold anyway. This couldn’t be the same sun that shined so brutally on him in the desert, could it? “This must be a different sun, a cooler one,” he told Jasper, who said nothing and only eyed him with a little amused suspicion.
They’d walked a long way to get here and now, Jasper told him, they were going to walk a lot more. They passed mausoleums with ornate architecture and stained glass. A monument to soldiers and sailors. The graves of Union soldiers and generals alike.
They stopped at one breathtaking grave, and Jasper put his palm lightly on the large glass case that held the reclining figure of a young woman with a child in her arms.
“Oh my God,” Robert said. “That’s amazing.”
“It’s a mother who died in childbirth and her daughter. The dad, Horatio Stone, commissioned the sculpture.” Jasper gazed into Rob’s eyes. “They say it’s haunted, and that around Halloween, the glass case fills with a white mist.”
“Really?” Rob felt a chill run up his spine.
“We were never able to confirm it.”
“We?” Rob asked.
“Lacy and me. Or Heather, as you called her.” Jasper started walking away from the tragically beautiful mother-and-child monument. He didn’t look at Rob as he explained, “This was one of our favorite places to come on days off. It didn’t matter what the weather was like. Sunny, like this, Rosehill is a place of tranquility. But on cold, gray, and drizzly days, it was something else entirely. Not spooky, like you might think, but just… sad. ‘Melancholy’ is what Lacy called it.”
They walked in silence for a while, passing more monuments and graves, elaborate and simple, all in tribute to souls now gone. Some memorials were so old the names had worn off, and Rob supposed anyone who knew who the tribute was for had long ago passed away too.
How long does it take before no one remembers us? How long does it take until there’s no one left on earth whom we’ve touched?
They came upon a beautiful pond that looked like something out of a picture book (as long as you didn’t mind the goose crap all around its edges), with mesmerizing, sunlit emerald water upon which a lone swan and a couple of geese floated.
“I’d say let’s sit down,” Jasper said, “but there doesn’t appear to be anywhere that won’t get us covered in poop.”
Rob laughed and then pointed out a couple of markers across from the pond. “Would it be disrespectful to sit on a tombstone or two?”
Jasper shrugged. “Maybe, but I doubt anyone will complain.”
Rob followed him to a couple of simple granite markers just off the road surrounding the pond. He let Jasper sit first and then sat down beside him.
“That got me, a little bit. What you said about Heather.”
Jasper looked wistful, staring off into the endless blue of a horizon broken up by a very few cirrus clouds, up high. “Lacy,” he said. “She wanted to be buried here.” He glanced over at Rob. “But they took her away. To California.”
