Prompt: In a graveyard

In the midafternoon, the robin’s chirp sent my mind back to London, to the park there where I left my dear Kevin kneeling, ring in hand, mouth agape, as I ran away from him. I was thankful for the red-breasted bird’s call, for the reminder of that moment, terrible as it had been at the time. Because at least, then, Kevin had been alive.

The robin must have had a nearby nest for she refused to leave and continued her complaint, perched on the headstone in front of which I now, ironically, kneeled.

Kevin Lewis Redman, 1973-2010. Beloved son and brother.

Not husband, though. Kevin had never become a husband. Thanks to me.

The dirt over his grave was soft and fresh, another reason the bold little bird wouldn’t scat, I imagined. A place ripe for worm and centipede-hunting, she had right here, but I stood at the foot of the overturned soil, just big enough and close enough to deter her. She cocked her head from atop the freshly-planted granite marker and eyed me warily.

I’d missed Kevin’s funeral. His parents hadn’t been able to find me. Not that they’d wanted to, of course. I’d been in India, on a train amidst steaming, sweating, pressing flesh, when Kevin had died. As you do, I’d desperately unearthed as much detail as possible about his passing – the day, the time, the exact place – so that I could revisit that moment in my life, to see if something supernatural had taken place. To examine that very second from every angle, to see if I had missed some important sign, a mystical shiver passing through my body, a familiar wink from a mysterious stranger, a gentle brush upon the back of my hand.

Nothing, of course. There had been nothing. Just nausea and noise and relentless, inexplicable stopping and starting as the train edged nearer the coast. Not even a sacred cow to be seen out the window.

Oh, Kevin, I thought, reaching out to touch the soil as though it were his skin, though he had never even touched this dirt. He would know that I was secretly glad to have missed the service, to have avoided his arrogant and puritanical parents. He would know that I had come here out of a sense of duty and obligation, not because I thought his “soul” lingered behind. Over the course of our six-year affair, we’d had enough late-night debates to establish, once and for all, that his Lutheran upbringing was entirely foreign to me, boring and slightly unattractive, and that I didn’t believe in the concept of a soul.

Kevin, estranged from his religious unbringing but not quite liberated from the associated guilt, held fast to the idea that we had some sort of soul, some sort of spirit that transcended the body.

The little robin hopped down onto the soil, perhaps emboldened by my immobility. It was my turn to cock my head at her. It was all I could do to keep from crying, to look at her and seek her forgiveness.

Dear Kevin, I thought. You must know that if you have a soul, you’ve forever damned yourself now. If only I’d known what you’d do when I ran from you in that park, silly boy. I may have married you just to keep you alive.