The Lives We Choose

The graves poked out of the earth like rotting teeth. In contrast to the weathered stones, the grass was vividly green, almost obscenely alive next to the remnants of the dead. Not knowing anybody apart from my family, and having only met the deceased, my grandfather’s friend Bernie only once or twice, I was bored. All I knew about Bernie was that he liked fishing and golf, which didn’t differentiate him much from any other old men I knew. The preacher had opened up his Bible and was reciting a psalm I’d heard a million times before-the one about shepherds. To distract myself from the tedium of it all, I devised a game of making up a story for a person based on their tombstone. Surprisingly, there was little you could learn about someone from a grave. Their name, their age, and who they were married to. The bare minimum. The rows of headstones trailed down a sloping hill in raggedy lines. We were standing at the top, circled around Bernie’s patch of earth.
The older graves, from the 19th century, often had depressing quotes. About death and God. About how the corpses might be dead. About them rotting in the dirt. But their spirit is with the lord, and so the living should rejoice. That seemed rather medieval to me.
I remember in seventh grade we learned about the Middle Ages, and the terrible lives led by the peasants and serfs. The clergy blatantly twisted their innocent, undivided faith into a higher power and used it to take their money and service. A better heavenly experience was promised in exchange for a little gold. The absolute promise of life after death and the constant fear of Hell were always present in those times, and apparently Heaven was the reward for suffering through a shitty life full of labor and debt. How different from today, where people live hesitant of everything. Certainties are reassuring, although most of them are shaded in layers of doubt just below the surface.
Friend nor Physician could not save
My mortal body from the grave,
Nor can the grave confine me here,
When Christ shall call me to appear.

As a life inevitably ends, Heaven comes to claim it. Such a black and white solution in a world full of grays. I can’t deny the beauty in it, but I wonder how content the person actually was in death. Did he go out peacefully, or screaming? And who picked out that particular rhyme to bedeck his headstone? Perhaps a son or relative, maybe a wife. Regardless, it reveals almost nothing about his true character.
One in particular stood out to me, partly because the buried woman had my first name.
Clara Brown
1805-1870
Wife of Edward Brown
I am now in the hands of the Lord.

To have your legacy be that of a spouse-- to be forever subservient to your husband-- that seemed a terrible way to be remembered. When I die, I don’t want to have my life summed up forever in a few desperate phrases. I want to be an eternal reminder to live life to the fullest, and not to spend life waiting: for graduation, for marriage, for salvation. Clara Brown seemed to have been waiting for the hands of the Lord to take her from the miserable life she’d been leading, a life that she wasn’t even the main character in.

I don’t want to be that Clara-I can’t be that Clara. I can’t spend my life as a wallflower, as an old woman sitting on a park bench hoping that someone will sit down next to me. After reading all those books about wonderfully brave people who go on adventures nonstop, how horribly ironic would it be for me to become the exact opposite. A bystander in my own life, only watching the action from afar, never joining in.

Remember when on the Cosby Show Vanessa snuck away with her friends to go to a concert in Baltimore or something like that? I hated episodes like that, where they broke the rules. The entire time I couldn’t enjoy the banter and jokes on the show because I knew that she would eventually get caught and yelled at. I really hated that part because I hate being punished. Even a harsh word from my teacher makes me feel awful for days. And I bet the other Clara-- the long dead one--felt the same way. If she were to be in one of those television shows, she’d most likely appear as the mousy little sister who was either dragged along or stayed home and worried. I’d probably be the same, but that’s no way to live life. Looking at that grave, I realized that constantly being in fear of punishment is just ridiculous.

All the major revolutionaries-the founding fathers, the abolitionists, the women’s suffrage advocates –would’ve been severely punished for their actions had they not won their respective fights. How ironic that schoolteachers praise their outlandish and shocking actions but carefully prune from their students every bit of fire and curiosity until we end up looking like trees in winter (the deciduous variety) without signs of growth, or even life. But beneath our dull gray exteriors, there is still water running, and still potential for greatness.
I wonder sometimes if adults are scared of us, of our potential, and if that is why we aren’t allowed to express ourselves in school. They’re frightened that we’ll take their knowledge and turn it right back on them with criticism and change. While the world isn’t good, it is somewhat stable, and stability is appealing. The addiction to routine sucks us in, depriving our brains of independent thought. So, we get grammar quizzes instead of great debates, and flashcards instead of freedom of speech. Revolutionaries rebelled against unfair circumstances and discrimination. Their lives weren’t going well, so they tried to change them. Why couldn’t I do the same thing? I’m not claiming that I’m living under oppression or anything, but life could be better. “Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.” We read that poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes in my English class last year, where my teacher picked apart every word in a cardboard voice, disregarding the sentiment so apparent in its meaning. Nothing is so tragic as a forgotten melody, or a life without purpose.

I brought my attention back to the preacher and his prosaic speech about what a good life the dead man had lived. I wonder what the priest would say if the deceased had been a grouchy old recluse who locked his doors on Halloween and never smiled a day in his life. Probably the same thing.

It seemed to me that people always put things off until it was too late. Expressing love, completing a bucket list and all sorts of other wishes and dreams. All you can do is move on, forget, and become just like everyone else- pretending that giving up is the same thing as moving on. And isn’t that just like growing up? The first thing I wanted to be when I was little was a detective. Then, a firefighter. Now, I have no idea. I don’t even know what I’m good at. I get good grades, but the only way I could use all of what I learn in school would be to become a teacher myself, which I have no desire to do. Not that I don’t like passing on knowledge or helping kids grow, but I’m too selfish to do something like that day after day. I get bored babysitting for an hour, so how would I do teaching something to kids who, a lot of the time, don’t want to learn it?

I don’t want to end up like Bernie, being slowly forgotten after my reception is over and the flowers have all wilted. Isn’t this supposed to be the best time of my life? Because that doesn’t seem to be the case with me right now. Tedious work and friendships that are barely tolerable seems to be the high school experience. But maybe it could be better. Maybe I could be better. I need to start relying on myself a little more, and less on my surroundings. There are so many success stories of self-made men and women, who rose from poverty, from oppression, or from discrimination. I could rise from tedium, from the vice that ensnares so many like me. It might not be as inspirational a story, but it could drastically improve my life.


***

After the funeral, I did a little research. Apparently, the symbols on tombstones all represent different ideas. Some I could have guessed, like the dove meaning peace or a mourning angel representing sadness, but most were completely alien to me. A peacock means eternal life, and a poppy eternal sleep. Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, when she and her entourage get stuck in that field of flowers and are knocked out, until Glinda comes to save the day. But not everyone has fairies watching over them.

So, that weekend I walked down to the train station and took the Amtrak to Boston. I boarded early, so I got a window seat. I watched my town disappear in the distance, which would’ve been a lot more exciting if I didn’t know that I’d be coming back in a mere seven or eight hours. My tendency for motion sickness prevented me from reading or writing, so I just watched the other passengers.
The only people actually talking were two girls about my age towards the back of the car. They were talking pictures of themselves and laughing shrilly.

After getting off at South Station, I got breakfast at a Starbucks and people-watched for a while. I took the 6:30 train, so it was still pretty early, but the store was mobbed nonetheless. Full of importants and non-importants ordering iced venti caramel macchiatos and vanilla chai lattes with extra skim.

People watching is a funny thing. It might be amusing at first; making up stories and backgrounds for strangers. But then you start to wonder-is someone doing the same to you? What if someone, right now, is watching me and laughing at me for being so flat and boring in this world full of color? As I was judging those girls on the train for being shallow, they were probably laughing at me for being so bland and angry. Even though that’s totally ridiculous, and everyone’s too self-absorbed nowadays to take the time to notice anything, I stop crafting the imaginary broken childhood of the man talking on the phone walking past, and focus on my food.

When I finished my overpriced breakfast, I decided to head to the Museum of Fine Arts. I swiped my mom’s membership card last night, so I shouldn’t have to pay an exorbitant price to get in.

I don’t really like the crusty old portraits, with intimidating old men holding their hats or stiff young debutantes in massive ruffled dresses. It’s so…fake. You can’t discover someone’s true character by dressing them up and arranging them in a dignified pose. It hasn’t changed much over the years. Headshots, profile pictures…they’re all artificial in some way. But I guess that’s what we all do. Try and pretend that we’re something we aren’t. More interesting, more humorous, and more intelligent. Everyone trying to be better in different ways. That’s why I like the candid paintings better. Take Winslow Homer for example. His paintings are so true to life. There isn’t normally anyone battling heroically in his works, just people enjoying a day, or sharing a moment. A sort of nostalgic look at the present.
***

It’s harder than you’d think to lead an exciting life when you have no interest in self-destruction. The dreaded triad of teenage evils: “drugs, alcohol, and premarital sex” hold little to no interest for me. Besides, I should be responsible for making my life more interesting, and all three activities are usually done with at least one other person, at least at my age. I’ll save the lonely drinking for my tortured artist years.

I guess being great requires overcoming fear and weakness. At least, that’s what the supposedly inspirational posters bedecking the halls of my school tell me. So I’ve tried to immune myself to failure, one of my biggest fears. I bombed a test on purpose, and got a D. I’m let go of the stress of getting all A’s and settled for B’s and C’s as well on projects. I doubt that was what the administration was going for when those posters were tacked onto every empty wall, but this is my game now, and I’m playing by my rules. The nagging little voice that tells me I’m sabotaging my chances of success has been pushed down by my newly found sense of drive to be more. There’s got to be more to life than school, and I’m planning on enjoying it. In ten years, most of us will be unemployed college graduates living at home anyways, so what’s the point in indulging in the fantasy that hard work brings success?


There’s one thing I really want to do-swim across the lake near my house. It’s really close by, just through the woods in my backyard. A lot of kids used to do it in the summer until one drowned a few years back. But I think he was drunk or something anyway. And I’m not the greatest swimmer; I never took lessons, and tend to stick to the shallow end of the pool. But I’m strong enough to make it, and humans float naturally, right? We’re full of air.

The only problem is, since that kid drowned, the lake is patrolled by day, and the houses surrounding it would see me and tell the police or my parents or something. So it would have to be by night. That’s kind of romantic actually: swimming in the darkness.


The mail came. When I went out to get it, I saw an envelope from my school. My report card. Lately in class, I’d only been focusing on what I found interesting. While I found my strategy intellectually fulfilling, my teachers had found it irritating, and I’d been pushing down the feelings of guilt that I was being a bad student, overshadowing the shame with promises of adventure. But now the guilty feeling was resurfacing, too much so to stop. I opened the envelope.

S***. What the hell am I doing thinking I’m so above it all, that I’m better than my teachers just because my cynical side can make me believe that failing a test is sticking it to the man. I can’t have grades like this for college. I can’t take this paper home but my mom will ask for it because she always knows when it’s arrived. And then my parents will see the D and the two Cs. The Cs in Chemistry and Math I’d expected, but the D in English really hurts. That used to be my favorite class, used to be my favorite teacher, until I decided that I was better than her. My dad will look at me in that sad sort of way that says that he wanted better but expected this. And then I’ll go up to my room and punish myself in a way much worse than my parents could ever punish me, and they know that. They know I’ll start hating myself even more and that I’ll try and make up for my screw up by studying more even though it’s too late and I’ll never get an A now, and never get into a good school. They know, and that’s why they never punish me for anything. I’ve never been grounded, and have rarely been yelled at. Such advanced parenting.

In a sitcom family, everyone makes a fool of themselves and laughs and makes up again. They are embarrassing and endearing and perfect. Not us. Laughter in our house is only cynical or condescending, and anger is contained.

I can’t possibly explain this. My ideas of rising up and seizing the day now seem childish in the light of facing my parents. Those plans seem more fit for a Hallmark card or a Dr. Seuss book than for my life. If only Glinda was here to tell me to click my heels together and everything will be alright. But I already am home, and there’s no such thing as magic.

I need to do something. Just one last thing, to prove to myself that I am worth something. Something secret, away from the demise I brought upon myself. The lake. I can put off the report card for one more day.
I tell my mom I forgot the grades at school. She buys it, or at least pretends to. She knows as well as I do that I have to show her sometime.

It’s very dark outside, but warm. It’s almost summer, so I suppose that makes sense. I leave the backdoor unlocked so I can get back into the house when I return. My shoes are making a lot of noise on the dead leaves, so I take them off and throw them into the yard. I’ll put them away in the morning.

The trees stretch above me into the sky-black on black. Reminds me of that Robert Frost poem.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep
And miles to go before I sleep.
But that poem was set in winter, and it’s summer now. How odd that Mr. Frost could find beauty in the skeletal remains of life. Or maybe he’s simply finding solace in the fact that the trees will bloom again-ever resilient from their dead slumbering. Their existence goes on, whether anybody notices or not. Is the forest that he was talking about still lovely and deep? Maybe, but maybe it’s made way for an apartment building or strip mall. Progress baby, ride the wave or drown in it.
I’ve reached the edge of the woods, down by the water. I really don’t want to leave the protection of the trees after all. But I have promises to keep- promises to myself, oaths that I swore I wouldn’t break. This is what I wanted.
And miles to go before I sleep. I’m so tired. I should really go back to bed. But this is the kind of life I’m supposed to have-the kind that thousands will remember. The air is warm, but the water’s cold. So cold.

And miles to go before I sleep.


Clara Hamilton
1996-2012
Now in the hands of the Lord.