There is a cemetery on 51st and Piedmont Avenue whose name escapes me now, where I go sometimes when I’m blue, but sometimes when I’m happy—to think, talk aloud, pray, ‘metamorphosize’, and the like. One particular day I was there, there was an actual funeral going on, a burial. I knew nothing of the person, the relatives, the lives of the attendants.

It was a gray day, storming actually, with thunder and lightning emerging from the sky. I parked my car at the top of the hill and watched the details of the event. Cars came, parked alongside me, people emerged and gathered, hovering over the gravesite. Prayers were offered, flowers were thrown onto the soil, and as I viewed the event, I slowly in my mind, imagined my husband and his girlfriend going down together into the grave—their relationship decaying, dissolving, dying. I watched until the last bit of earth was thrown into the grave and the last relative left the scene.

The skies opened up and the rains poured out. As I drove away down the hill, the groundskeepers were planting the last two of a row of red maple trees. New life, new growth, hope.