Forget me not

I had to drop my car in for some work today, and having a couple of hours to spare, I ended up strolling through the grave yard behind McCarthy Motors in San Luis Obispo.  This may seem morbid to some, but for me, not … I’ve always found grave yards fascinating places to visit, a reminder of our fallibility, and how temporary and fleeting our visit here is.  I always pay particular attention to the dates, trying to tally up the time period in which someone may have lived or died, with something I may know about from that period.  Today, while walking through the graveyard, off in the distance I saw a gravestone, and tied to it some balloons waving at me; little toys lay scattered around the headstone.  I continued to look at the gravestones left and right of me, but the balloons kept calling me back.  I imagined it to be the grave of some child, no doubt the balloons left by grieving parents and siblings … probably would have had a birthday around about now, hence, the balloons …

I made the rounds of the gravestones, cleaning some dirt off of ones long since forgotten by time, without a visitor to speak of in perhaps decades, and finally made it to the balloons … It wasn’t the grave of a child … the balloons had been left by some children for their dad on mothers day … ‘Scotty’ Fairbanks, born 1967 / died 2005, aged 38.  There was a picture of him on the gravestone, flashing a smile and the ‘Iry dude’ finger wave, and wearing a Hawaiian shirt that only California and Hawaii would allow … I can’t explain why, but I felt very humbled standing there alone with my thoughts, in front of the gravestone of a person I had never met, a grave decorated with balloons and blanketed by kids toys.  And for reasons known only to those who understand loss, I also felt unimaginably sad and close to tears.

I took a walk today and saw some balloons waving at me from a distance …

Just some random lines inspired by a stranger

© 2008, Tim (P) Prendeville