I like taking a moment to stop at each gravestone and wonder what this person’s life was; surely more than a name and two dates. Was this person tall and slender with wispy red-blonde curls? Or was he short and tan, with a crooked white smile? What types of suffering did this person endure? Who came by his grave to drop off flowers and teardrops when he first passed?

It doesn’t seem fair, for someone’s life to be over, just like that. For everything that’s happened to suddenly mean nothing. All of the sadness that overtook him at night, and all of the happy memories that left him smiling to himself on sunny mornings, simply forgotten.

Maybe cemetery’s aren’t meant for visiting the ones we still miss, but to fill in the blanks for those who have no one left on Earth to miss them; even if we’re filling them in false. We need to create a past for the name carved into the stone. I think it’s nice to sit by someone’s grave, Indian style, close my eyes, and dream up a life for them, to keep them on earth a little longer. It’s bittersweet, really. It’s nostalgia in the strangest form.