Here Lies

There is no headstone.

No rectangular concrete marker with a rounded edge across the top to blunt the grief. No carved heart of incongruously shiny granite, no lichen-embossed urn to hold flowers and remind me of my emptiness. There are no words carved indelibly to remind anyone that she was.

My mother wanted to be cremated, and have her ashes scattered in the mountains. She thought funerals were barbaric, all those people hovering over an expensive coffin holding a person who's gone, all that wailing and swaying, all that sadness. 

She hated the idea of people coming to sit at a marker to mourn her. Celebrate, she said, because I've gone somewhere better. No use being sad.

Perhaps she didn't understand that funerals and graves and headstones aren't for the dead. They're for the living.

For the ones left behind who have nothing to hold but air and memories. For the ones who are left with no way to prove their loved one existed except this box she rested in for a while, this rock that bears her name.

Perhaps she didn't know I'd miss her.

I have nowhere to lay down all this grief, so it stays inside me. It slowly turns to stone.