by Mia Zavala, 12th grade

I have a very complicated relationship with graveyards.

My first impression of graveyards would be the cartoon episodes featuring a group of teenagers that catch spooky antagonists who scheme by poorly lit graves and eventually damn those, “meddling kids!” after they are caught. The scene of a graveyard was masqueraded with images of thick dead trees that hung hunched over like an old man with extreme Kyphosis, and an ominous moon served as the only source of  light to guide the desiccated paths. Surely even a clueless young kid, like myself, could tell this graveyard place was not somewhere you would want to simply wander into. 

However, I encountered my first proper introduction of a graveyard when my Great-grandmother passed and was set to be buried behind our community church when I was young. I prepared to catch some fiendish ghoul who looked suspicious and might be off their game that morning. The time for the burial arrived and I was slightly annoyed at the burning California sun saturating the waves of green grass that swallowed the impact of the heavy headstones. The people surrounding me did not seem to notice the serendipity of that day. They were all swollen with horrendous grief that blinded them from the striking harmonies that the Meadowlark birds had mastermind. As I looked around it became clear that no one saw the serenity of all the flowers that stippled the scene, and no one could feel the relief of the soft breeze. There were no goblins or ghosts, not even a suspicious looking grave-digger, and If I am being honest, it was all a little disappointing. There was, however, a lot of pain and sadness at that graveyard on that beautiful sunny summer morning.

My dad would probably tell you that I’ve got a screw loose somewhere in my chemically imbalanced brain to be noticing all the wonderful details about the area surrounding my Great-grandmother’s grave, and he might be right. But, I didn’t see the point of ignoring such an exquisite scene. Of course, death is heartbreaking and truly is such a gut-wrenching experience that we all must face, but death, like the graveyard, is also so beautiful. This realization came to me at a much later, and a much more challenging stage in my life. 

When I was thirteen years old, my mother was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer and had to go through several invasive procedures to try and prevent any metastasizing of the tumor to occur. My mom had accepted that the odds were not in her favor, and one day took my dad and I to pick a plot at a graveyard for her to be buried in. I was only in their company because the church had been down the street from my middle school, so they brought me there like it was some casual shopping trip that would only take five minutes. My mother went about her morbidity in a very casual matter-of-fact way that was so irritating to me at the time, but now I can see what she was doing as it really was, a coping mechanism. So we weaved through the openness of the yard, which seemingly taunted us with its emptiness and almost begged for us to fill a spot. I was completely encapsulated in blinding rage, and engulfed in total despair. This graveyard had no right to take away what was mine. It had no right to connect my mother to a world without me in it. As I fought back tears and tried to swallow the lump of anger that built in my throat, I looked up to see my mother smiling. She left stinging remarks about how beautiful the church architecture looked, and how well maintained the trees were. I could not remember how I saw graveyards with such wonder all those years back, instead all I saw was a place that served as a bridge between the living and the dead. And my mother, who I rarely saw smile those days and who was completely emaciated from the chemotherapy, was seemingly at peace and satisfied. I confronted her, my rage drove me to a point to do so. I needed to know she was just as angry at the thought of losing me as I was of losing her. But she wasn’t. She told me she couldn’t wait to go to Heaven, because then she would be able to watch over me and all my siblings. She had described death as something so magnificently beautiful that it forever changed my view. I remembered my childhood perception of the graveyard in its most simplistic form and revived that feeling of bliss. 

My mother survived cancer, and has been cancer-free ever since her last day of radiation therapy. Even though her journey was so hard to witness, I learned not to fear death but to embrace it and to remember those who have passed as a testament to live our life to the fullest.

Now, I often run a route that takes me past a cemetery located on a jagged street with my teammates. They all play with the idea that the place must be haunted and hold horrific horrors of the restless deceased. I laugh along, but I am comforted by the thought of enjoying a brisk walk through the tranquility of a graveyard.

I give graveyards 3.5 out of 5 stars.