where the living rest in peace

”. . . when I feel myself flagging I cheer myself up in Pere LaChaise [a Paris cemetery] . . . while seeking out the dead I see nothing but the living.” --Balzac

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Workweek diversions come hard, grudgingly, for me. That’s why I like hanging out at midday at Holy Cross Cemetery, which sprawls luxuriantly on a hill overlooking Marina del Rey and the flights in and out of Los Angeles International Airport. Man’s silver birds are a constant reminder that life streaks on, no matter how many bodies we bury. I sit on a lawn chair next to my daughter’s grave and munch a tuna sandwich, imagining the expectant, pent-up travelers looking out their windows. They’re probably clutching their seat belts, ready to release the buckle and spring up as soon as their plane arrives at the gate. Ultimately, they pay no attention to the green speck on which I now sit. And for those taking off over the Pacific Ocean, looking back perhaps at this piece of Los Angeles they will never visit, I blow a kiss of good luck and Godspeed. These good wishes are what my daughter rode the skies with so many times as a college student and young professional. “Always on the go,” her mother used to say. “Ready to take a flight at the slightest provocation. That’s youth for you.”

Kristen was crushed on a Manhattan street by a hit-and-run driver Memorial Day weekend, 1997. She was 25, too young to be visited at this verdant expanse of 100 rolling acres across the street from the Marina Freeway. Just a few thin lanes of traffic separate the living from the dead.

This place of quiet order takes on a park-like persona on weekends and holidays--absent the beaches’ in-line skaters and joggers, although occasionally there are a few of those, too. At these prime leisure times, the graveyard buzzes with young people. Families gather in their own form of holiness and religious ritual, some with picnic baskets, many with lounge chairs to place amid the graves. Talk enlivens the usually dead space, taking on more importance in this setting, like a whispered phrase in a library reading room. There are groups of young Asians and Latinos with shaved heads or ponytails, tattooed young warriors, many coming to visit victims of our ongoing urban warfare. Their boomboxes annihilate the solitude, and their cigarette smoke fouls the usually clean air. No one complains, though. This is neutral turf. Scions of Southern California’s wealthy mix with the homeboys.

I like the weekdays for their solemnity and grace. I do not have to stay long to capture a piece of the cemetery’s most valuable resource: time. Here there is time for anything. There are no phones (I still refuse to get a cellular) and no pressures to be someone or something that I am not. I carry no paper or PC. Nevertheless, I “compose” here, writing in my head the highlights of a mundane life. But it is a life just the same.

I enjoy watching the jets and looking out at the blue sliver of the Pacific Ocean that stretches from Malibu to the Marina. I take quiet comfort in knowing that L.A.’s sprawl is no match for the ocean’s vastness and beauty. Even Bill Gates can’t annex this from us.

I feel rich in this graveyard. While I spray water on the flowers at Kristen’s grave, I spot movement among the blooms. It is a large and beautiful bee that seems a perfect fit with the delicate petals. It plays with the flowers awhile and then jets off, ignoring LAX’s flight pattern (no ground controllers here). A couple of young boys--no more than age 4 or 5--dance around a water spigot about 30 yards from me, playing while their grieving mother adorns the grave of her young husband with holiday decorations.

I sometimes envy the many grave workers employed here. They are outdoors, close to nature, doing a very necessary job. I see them in their blue-gray uniforms, leaning on shovels, operating digging equipment or doing simple grass and bush trimming, and I wonder if they let the solemn funerals or the contents of all those coffins get to them. Do the dead play mind games with the gravediggers? Can the cemetery workers feel the souls sharing this space, or is it only God’s wind and sunshine and a paycheck that motivates them to come to work each day?

The two youngsters play on, unperturbed by my stares. I rarely speak to anyone. My thoughts are simple, kept closely inside. This is not a place for sharing, only for being. The breeze is our companion in a struggle with loneliness.

I almost never cry these days. I’m tired of death, I think, tired of cursing my daughter’s absence. Here, inside Holy Cross’ sheltering womb, my daughter’s remains rest and I have no expectations but to be momentarily free of human concerns. I finish my sandwich. I count the convoy of jets streaming into LAX. The ocean breeze nudges me, but I do not move.