Gasoline, Graveyards And Ghosts

Let’s backtrack to Wednesday.

The day I contracted the plague.

I told you there was a story and today I am going to tell it. So grab a glass of sweet tea and settle in because it is a doozy.

I went out in the morning to mail some letters and do some banking. As luck would have it, traffic was heavy and I was unable to make the left turn out of the bank parking lot that I needed to make in order to head straight home.

So I turned right.

That’s how so many adventures, or misadventures, start.

Bugs Bunny should have taken the left turn at Alburquerque.

Christopher Columbus miscalculated his route to China and was thwarted by the Americas which he had not accounted for and which lay between Europe and Asia.

All of those luckless teens in the “Wrong Turn” movies who took that unmarked shortcut or dared to ask what lay beyond the unmarked road.

So I turned right, turned the radio (Blue October) up and drove.

And drove and drove and drove.

There is a “Zen” moment when you are driving just to drive; no time frame, no destination, that the meaning and the meaninglessness of everything becomes ALMOST clear.

You can ALMOST connect with those you have lost.

You can ALMOST understand the grand design of the Universe.

You are “in the zone,” switching gears, rounding bends, ALMOST to the destination you hadn’t set out to arrive at.

You are ALMOST there.

The Universe is a temptress. She gives you a peak. Gives you a glimpse. She draws you close and then flees around the next corner and the next and the next. She mocks your efforts to keep up. To understand. To catch her. She mocks you for believing that you in your six speed automobile could ever break the barrier between your world and hers; that you could ever cross over into “the truth.”

It was as a teenager, sent to live with my father (in Georgia,) because I had become too headstrong for my mother, that I first discovered this portal. I would hop into the car, fire up 80’s big hair radio, light a cigarette (mostly for show) and drive and drive and drive. I would arrive home hours past curfew unable to adequately explain that I hadn’t really gone anywhere despite the odometer and low gas gauge claiming otherwise. I was grounded and no closer to cracking the code.

The Universe had once again betrayed me.

It was this forward momentum, driven by the past, that propelled me that Wednesday morning.

I took the right turn and the turn after that and so on and so on until I hit the straightaway and the music and the hum of the engine and the Universe converged and I was ALMOST there once again.

I was in “the zone,” passing through swatches of clear cut coastal pine; logging trucks handily passed, a speck in the rear view. Justin Furstenfeld singing about “X Amount of Words,” nothing ahead for miles, when I spotted it, slammed on the brakes and veered right once again.

IT was a gas station/graveyard combo.

The dearly departed were resting under a neon sign declaring “the best gas prices” and a special on hot dogs.

What was happening?!?!?!?

Anyone who knows me know that I am a sucker for a Gothic graveyard. The rust of an old iron fence, the overgrowth of a bramble bush; faded inscriptions a testament to a life well lived and honorably remembered.

THIS (to me) was a travesty.

I parked the car and tried to comprehend what I had stumbled upon.

There were relatively new graves along with an “established” sign reading 1865. This tells me people chose to be buried there (probably alongside relatives) until quite recently.

Until the “Friendly” gas station (I assume) felt the need to build right on top of the already existing graveyard.

How are people supposed to mourn the dead, converse with the spirits and connect with the Universe with a neon sign flashing overhead?

I felt an overwhelming sense of sadness and grief as I wandered up and down the uneven rows, taking note of names and dates. I felt on a primal level that those who had passed and those who were left behind had been cheated out of the privacy and dignity death and mourning should provide. It is one thing to stumble upon a back road cemetery that is isolated and seemingly abandoned; those drawn to it can find it and mourn openly. A graveyard next to a gas station, in full view of the public, cheats the living and the dead out of a genuine mourning experience.

I was angry and sad and unable to comprehend what I had stumbled upon.

I reversed course, came home and was sick for two and a half days.

I was light headed. I was nauseous. I had blurred vision. I was hot and I was cold all at the same time.

Being a person of sense and logic……I was convinced I had brought home a ghost. It was the only logical explaination.

My husband, who is not quite as logical as I am, blamed the sushi I ate the day before, extending his reach to the gas station peppermint candy/diet soda combo I consumed on an empty stomach.

I tried all of the things I have learned from watching scary movies to rid myself of this “ghost.” I hugged a stranger in an effort to pass it to the next person. I asked it nicely and not so nicely to leave. I tried to catch a glimpse of it in mirrors that I passed. I promised that I would tell the story of the old graveyard by the gas station just passed the city limits sign. I promised that I would bear witness, that I would remember. That I would hold the lives of those buried there in higher esteem than the two for one energy drink sale the flashing sign was promoting.

And then….it was gone.

“Run its course” my husband believed.

“Found a witness” I knew.