I Whitewashed a Tomb That Is Not Mine

the brush is mine. the names are not. i keep them anyway.

Today is Toussaint. I do not usually post on it. This one is short, written early, before I go out with a bucket.

Last year on All Saints I was in a cemetery I will not name, doing nothing in particular, when a woman older than anybody I know asked me to hold her ladder. Then she asked me to hand her the brush. Then, because her shoulder was bad, she asked me to do the top. So I whitewashed the top of a tomb belonging to a family I am not part of, while she told me who was inside it, one at a time, oldest first, with a year and one thing about each of them.

A man who could fix any outboard but his own. A girl who sang flat in church on purpose to make her brother laugh. A baby, 1931. No story, she said. Just a name, and we say it.

When I was done she thanked me, and then she said, now you know them, so you come back. And I said I would.

I do not know if she will be there today. She was not young. If she is not, I have the brush, I have the names, and the lime is free at most halls this morning.

I have written about a lot of things on this blog that I could not explain. This one I can. Go see your people. And if somebody asks you to hold a ladder, hold it.

I relay. You decide.

In Truth and Terror.
— Beau