Epitaphs

A cemetery groundskeeper must tend to the grave of the person he loves

It had seemed to Frank Lanard that for as long as he could care to remember, his very life itself had been centred upon death. His duty as a groundskeeper had been to tend the memorials of the dead and, to most, the forgotten. He however, took to heart the job of preserving the thousands of slowly crumbling names, all of which he took great pride in. Not a pride for his own actions of the careful tending to those he surveyed, but for the achievements of all those lost people he protected. He had always lingered between the two plains yet the death he knew was a disconnected one. He knew not what real loss entailed; what the relatives he had always comforted silently mouthed while hiding their tears behind hastily-purchased flowers and borrowed dress-coats. Although ignorant on many of the aspects of loss, Frank had always dreaded the day he would have to dig a grave for someone he loved.
Often, as he paced the lines of stone, Frank would make a glancing effort to memorise the numerous epitaphs and the stories hidden within them; after all, raking leaves for five days a week could quickly become monotonous, but today it could also be glorious. Summer had withered and the titian leaves lay frozen on the ground, gleaming in front of the autumnal sunrise. Frank's house lay on the Northern border of the cemetery, and as he rose from his sleep he was blinded by the welcome light which forced its way through the crack in the curtain. Only after kissing his dreaming wife on the brow and feeling her warm breath did he pull on his heavy coat and venture outside.
A chill filled his chest as he inhaled the crisp air. No matter the innocent beauty of the morning, Frank knew it was a sick façade, for today there was to be a burial and it was to be his task to prepare the pit for the entombment. It was on days like this that he took sorrow from his career. These days would cause him to remember that all these names were just ghosts. The friendship he felt towards them was one-sided and false. They no longer had the capacity to love and vilify and feel the early October light on their faces. And although he tried so hard to keep them alive in his heart, he knew that one day he would rest in the dark next to them; blind and always cold.
The man was laid to rest. Frank did not know him, but the recounts of him uttered through smudged mascara praised him as a kind man. He knew that as long as their lips still uttered his name he would not be abandoned. After dusting the gloss casket with daisy petals and dirt, they departed in a mist of farewells, and Frank was left to return the loose soil to the earth. The last few days had been dry, so he finished earlier than expected and turned across the path, homeward.
He was not, as he entered his front door, greeted in the same fashion as he was used to. The stove hissed as the potatoes boiled over and a dark smoke filled the room. Frank yanked the pan onto the adjacent ring, burning his hand on the metal handle in the process. He watched as the coarse skin on his palm turned red and began to rise. Draping a damp cloth over his injury, he turned to look for his Helen. Ever since they met she had been patching him up after his many mishaps, and fortunately in being a nurse she was fairly adept at fitting a bandage. But as he turned the corner into the living room, he found her lying in an unnatural, twisted position on the floor, still in her midwifery tunic.
He fell to, dropping the cloth from his hand and lifting her face to his ear. He heard only a muted rasping and looked to see her chest only rising minutely in unsteady heaves. He swiftly, clutching her warm yet trembling body, carried her to their car and placed her in the back seat, sprawling his coat over her her. Driving, oblivious to the traffic and figures drifting back and forth around him, he made to return her to the same hospital from which only a few hours prior, she had departed. As he drove through the approaching night, his eyes were fixated on the rear mirror where each flash of a passing street lamp led his eyes to her blanched face and his mind to the soiled daisies of that afternoon.
‘Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia’, the doctors had told him the next morning, followed by the assertion that as she was diagnosed so late she had around five months left. A statement which wistfully did come to pass and as he watched the colour gradually diminish from her face and her lips turn pale he felt again, his own mortality. During those few long months Frank could feel nothing but a dull, all enveloping pain. Every attempt made to sleep or distract himself in any way were reduced to nought by the sound of his Helen's agonised moans which circled his head like foul vultures. The flowers he once cultivated to line the many rows of brilliant granite slabs now lay bunched by her bedside; their kaleidoscopic colours fiercely accenting her chalky, sunken cheeks which were once as soft and pink as the roses which now veiled her.
His Helen’s hands - which only a few short months ago delivered so much life - were now clutched in his, trembling and withered until so suddenly, with a final smile so delicate and warm as that of an angel; they dropped still.
She was laid to rest on the far side of the cemetery, in a most beautiful spot which only Frank had seen at twilight, when the last glistening fragments of sunlight bounced off the surrounding inlet like newborn stars. And where the mourners came and went, he sat by her listening to the melancholy dirge of the crows, joining him in his grief and keeping him company throughout that first freezing, endless night of his seemingly eternal watch.
The next morning, after shakily arising from his slumped position against the ivy-covered wall, Frank made for his garden where he gathered a bouquet of the last of the Begonias which he positioned on top the still loose mound of dirt just before the temporary wooden stab engraved with only her name.
As he stood alone over the encased corpse of his beloved, it did on this moment dawn on Frank that he no longer had anything left to live for. He and his Helen did wish for children but when the realisation occurred that it wasn’t possible, he comforted her with the vow that they needed not children - that regardless he would always be there for her - but it had never truly registered with him that when she left he would be so desolate in his heart that he would be led to feel quite like this. The light of his life was gone and he only wished to follow. It wasn’t simply for the fool's hope of rejoining her in Elysium, for he had long suspected no place so hopeful could be remotely true, but rather for the hope of the void where he could no longer feel such intense torment and emptiness.
And so, in his grief for his departed love, he planned his own annihilation.
First he waited, barely straying from her body until her brilliant white headstone had been placed; carved with an epitaph that felt perfect enough to keep her alive. The days and nights merged into one and the same for so long that he never noticed the relentless weeds creeping over the grass - as if sensing his helplessness - until he finally decided that it was time. After laying his last and most marvellously beautiful bunch of pure-white daisies by her and walking between the blocks of his friends, offering a last sincere farewell, he drove to his doom.
As Frank stepped from his car onto the rugged rocks, the wind seemed to urge him back from the edge - but it was to no avail - for the pull of cruel waves latched onto the emptiness in his heart and sadistically tugged him to the point of no return. Allowing a moment to gaze into the dark waters, he stood still. Long forgotten memories of his Helen crept back into focus and eased his drawn lips into a warm smile.The blinding beam of the lighthouse pressed his eyes closed for him as it circled his head and ventured out towards the murky currents. He shuffled his foot and let go, leaning forwards.
Frank felt a sudden waft of salt air fly past his ears as he squeezed his eyes shut. He waited, yet after what he perceived to be far too many moments, he had still not felt himself plunge into the cold embrace of the sea. As he lifted his eyelids and turned his gaze he saw a hand stretching forwards to clutch his, with attached to it a long arm wrapped in white silk. Looking up he found an angular face belonging to a woman whom he had never met.
“You are a generous soul, Frank Lanard,” she whispered in a voice so poetic it echoed a thousand words at once. “But it is not yet your time.”
Speechless, he observed her unshifting sapphire eyes, before peering over her gently sloping shoulder to see behind her an assembly of perfectly still figures, each fixated on him. As he gazed further back into the parade, more and more faces emerged from the ivory fog until he was totally surrounded in the silence.
He didn’t need to spot his wife standing perfectly in amongst the others to understand the significance of their presence, for he already knew all their names and to him that was enough.

Author's Note

This was my written as part of my SQA Higher English folio, and thus I was very limited in my alotted word count. I have added a few small changes since, but it is still very far from perfect. However, I would like to continue writing and need criticism in order to advance (don't hold back).

Reviews

[Viv Wade]

I really enjoyed this very well written, extremely sad story. I was prepared for a sad finish, so I was surprised and glad that it had an uplifting ending! Just one thing I'd like to mention, the sentence 'The days and nights merged into one and the same for so long that he never noticed the relentless weeds creeping over the grass " as if sensing his helplessness' - has a quotation mark in the middle. I think this has probably happened because you use google chrome and you pasted your story in. For some reason dashes get turned into quotation marks. The same thing happens to me all the time!

[MerryGo]

Thank you for your kimd comment, it's much appreciated. As for the quotation marks, I think you were exactly right and I've fixed it.