I dug a grave yesterday. I dug it deep in our woods on a wide shelf located in a grove amid the pines, down a hill from one of our fields. To get there, you must stoop and walk between the nettles, blackberries, and weeds that disguise its entrance, but, when you do, you find yourself in a tiny natural cathedral where quiet and shade prevail and contemplation is encouraged.
Digging there proved more difficult than I had anticipated. The ground is laced with running roots from ferns, pine, and god knows what. And when you finally manage to cut through the roots with the tip of your spade, you find the rocks lurking beneath. But these rocks were my friends since I could use them to overlay the grave in hopes of preventing depredation by coyotes or other foraging animals. I prised them out carefully and kept them in a separate pile for the purpose.
Digging a grave is tiring work, especially for one of my age. So I wasn’t able to dig it as deep as I’d hoped. The day was hot and the nature of the work depressing. There is no satisfaction in digging a grave. It is a necessary thing if you wish to honor the dead, but no joy is to be found in the work. Perhaps if I dug graves for a living, I might learn pride in a sheer clean side, a level floor, and attainment of satisfactory depth. As in all things, there must be a best way to do it, a way that gives the satisfaction of a job well done.
But satisfaction was beyond me; my job was not well done by such standards. I produced a shallow grave, approximately rectangular but not wholly so. But it was just big enough and deep enough for my purpose. When Helen returned later in the day, we went to pile the bricks on the grave that Helen found somewhere within her inexhaustible store of garden paraphernalia. I never know what she can find there, which is why I’d waited for her. Besides, I knew she would want to know the grave’s exact location so she wouldn’t have to hunt for it on her own.
It would have been difficult for Helen to find the grave there in the cathedral-like gloom, covered, as it was, by the pine needles and twigs I’d placed over it to complete my chore. My camouflage was good enough to conceal the grave from humans, but not from any animal with a keen sense of smell. And even if the covering of bricks fails to keep out such an animal blessed with sharp claws and an instinct to dig, there is a part of me that shall not complain – for all living things eventually return to their constituent chemical elements, and if, in doing so, sustenance is given to another living being, is that such bad thing? My own goal, after all, is to be cremated and buried underneath the root ball of a newly planted tree – preferably an apple.
When I had filled the grave with its unfortunate contents and dirt, covered it over with rocks, pine needles, and debris, I stood and said goodbye. I promised George that his sister would join him eventually. George had been the talkative cat – the one that always had something to say when I came near, its meaning somehow clear even if he spoke with runic mystery. George and I were pals – not close friends, because George and Gracie probably came from a feral mother and learned stand-offish ways as kittens. Gracie is even more stand-offish than George was, approaching only when it is her wish – which is seldom and without any words to the wise.
When George spoke it was to verify his presence and conjure a stroking hand. The attention he sought was finite; when he’d had enough, he would turn, vocalize his thanks, and walk away. He had the typical split personality of a cat: anxious and fawning when seeking attention; otherwise aloof, unapproachable, cloaked in his impermeable dignity. I’ll miss him.
I don’t often go to the grove, but when I do it is usually in late Summer. I prefer its cool depths when the sun is high and hot. I stay there for several minutes to contemplate the mysteries of lives spent within the complexity and grace of such a foreign ecology. I let its pregnant silence fill me until I am renewed.
It will be good to have George’s company the next time I visit. Perhaps he will speak to me again.
