Finally, she bends down and places something on the mound of earth, a small flower, a rose, I think, though I'm too far away to be sure. Then she straightens, touches her fingers to her lips, and presses them to the air above the grave.
A kiss goodbye.
She turns and walks slowly back toward the parking lot, her steps are slow but firm. I hope she finds peace. As she fades intothe distance, I finish the sketch and close my book, deciding to explore a little before I head home and wait for Dom to get home from work.
The older sections of the cemetery are in the back, past the manicured lawns and modern headstones. Here, the graves are from another era, all weathered stone, moss-covered markers and names worn smooth by decades of rain and wind.
I wander through the rows, my camera in hand, feeling the peace of this place settle over me like a blanket. There's something meditative about old cemeteries. The way time has softened everything. The way nature has reclaimed the spaces between graves, grass growing tall, wildflowers pushing up through cracks in the stone.
I photograph a headstone dated 1847. The name is barely legible, something that might be "Sally" or "Samuel," the letters eroded by time. The epitaph is completely gone, worn away by a century and a half of weather.
Who were you? I wonder, framing the shot. What did you love? What did you fear? Who mourned you when you died? The questions don't need answers as the mystery is part of the beauty.
I move to another grave, this one with a small stone angel perched on top. The angel's face is smooth, features erased by time, but the wings are still visible, delicate, detailed, a testament to the sculptor's skill.
Click.
Another photograph. Another moment of history preserved.
I think about death as permanence. How these people have been gone for over a century, but their graves remain. I thinkabout how grief outlasts the grieving. How memory becomes stone and moss, blending into part of the earth itself and settling into the landscape. The way it becomes sacred through time.
I spend an hour wandering the old section, photographing headstones, sketching weathered epitaphs, letting my mind drift through thoughts of mortality and memory, with the strange comfort of knowing that death is the one universal truth.
When I finally return to my car, I feel settled. Calm. Like I've been to church, or meditation, or whatever it is people do when they need to reconnect with something larger than themselves. This is my spiritual practice.
Death as art. Grief as beauty. Time as the ultimate sculptor.
I drive home to Dom with a full camera and a quiet contentment in my chest. This is exactly where I'm supposed to be.
The following day I'm on my laptop, organizing the digital files from my camera when an email notification pops up.
The sender is unfamiliar:[email protected]
Subject:Your Work
I open it cautiously.
Hi,
I came across some of your photography online (I think through a forum post?) and I'm absolutely captivated. The bleakness and morbid sense of life you have captured is extraordinary.
I'm a curator at a gallery in Los Angeles, and I'd love to discuss potentially representing you or showing your work. Would you be open to a conversation?
Best,
Melissa Lammings.
Curator, Avant Gallery LA
My heart stops, shit, someone found my work. How, though? I must have posted something months ago, before we left our old lives. Before we became James and Roxy Brennan. Some fragment of my old portfolio still floating in the digital ether. And now a gallery curator wants to show it.
I should be excited. This is what I've been working toward, a gallery representation, exhibitions, a legitimate career, but all I feel is panic.
Because this wasn’t the plan. The plan is to build the portfolio first, then submit on my terms, under my control. Not to be discovered accidentally by someone who might ask questions, might want to meet me, might connect the work to the old Roxy who's supposed to be dead.
"Dom!"
He appears from the bedroom, immediately alert. "What's wrong?"
