Hell

 I went to visit my parents' gravesite earlier today.  In classic Florida form it was bright and sunny when I left the library for the ten minute drive to the cemetery. Within a minute the skies became dark. When I made my turn onto route 441, there was the kind of deluge that makes drivers consider pulling over to the side of the road because they can barely see.  I forged ahead and the rain lightened up a bit.  By the time I turned into the cemetery grounds, it was just drizzling.  I drove to the area where the stone sits, and waited in the car for the rain to subside completely.  Which it did.  I then grabbed the chair I had put in the car for the visit and plod up the wet grassy hill, found the stone, and sat.

A half hour later I returned to where my car was parked.  I saw that there now was a car behind me. A woman, maybe a year or two younger than me, was standing shakily by the vehicle.  She had what looked like a tissue in her hand and was wiping the rain drops off of her car.  It was a hopeless endeavor if drying the car was indeed what she was seeking to do.  Had we not been in a cemetery, had the tissue been a towel, had there been a bucket of sudsy water near the tire, had the woman not been so visibly sad--her movements would have looked like those of a carwash employee who was in the final stages of cleaning a vehicle.  She kept rubbing the car with the tissue.

When I approached my car, she smiled at me, or attempted to smile through her tears.  I said hello and she responded similarly.  She looked like she was having a difficult moment and so I asked her if this was a tough day. She nodded.  Yes, she said.  "You visiting someone?" I said. "Yes" she said again through tears.  "My son."  "Oh", I said "Your son.  I'm sorry"  She thanked me and told me that her son was now gone for a year and a half and had been only 32.  None of this came out of her without tears. I asked if it had been a COVID related death.  She said no and then murmured that she did not want me to ask about the cause.  She asked me what brought me to the cemetery. I told her and she said that a few months after she buried her son, she also buried her own mother.  She kept wiping the car with a tissue.  Her mother she said had been 92, and had lived a good long life, leaving out what she was tacitly saying clearly, "but my son was only 32."

She said she knew she would see her son again.  I wished her good luck. She said she did not believe in luck, she believed in (and then pointed to the sky).  She was so shaky that I asked if she lived nearby as I was worried that this person might have trouble driving given her sadness.  She thanked me but told me not to worry--she was fine--and lived close by.

I said goodbye and went to my car. As I was driving away I wondered about the emotional toll this young man's death had taken on his mother. A year and a half later, she was still distraught to the point of making me wonder if she could drive. Now maybe this was the boy's birthday; maybe it was her birthday; maybe it was another anniversary of some sort.  And the significance of the date was what fueled the sadness. But I did not get that sense. It seemed like for this woman every day, or at least for a time within each day, she had trouble coping because of her young man's death.  I've not been there; but I can imagine how the sadness could irreparably damage one's perspective and potential to experience joy.