Whenever I go on what “old-timey” people would call a constitutional, I find myself inevitably drawn to the cemetery. Lured in by its tranquility—a silence that cannot be gleaned in other public places—I end up walking and/or sitting there instead of ever bothering to commune with the living. I much prefer the dead. They’re the only ones who have truly been humbled. I guess all it takes to reach that point is a stopped heart. 

I also like the cemetery I consistently go to because it just so happens to have a discreetly placed public bathroom. Though I imagine that, no matter how discreet, the homeless are still quite capable of zeroing in on it like a missile. And that’s when it dawns on me: the closest that the homeless will get to enjoying the perks (or perk)—that is to say, burial—of a cemetery is sneaking into it to use the bathroom (sometimes, regardless of whether or not there actually is one). It’s true that no one talks about it a lot, but there can be quite a few traces of “bathroom activity” on the ground—even right next to the graves. I imagine the homeless aren’t really in a headspace for giving much consideration to notions of “disrespect.” After all, it’s not as though society really gave much consideration to respecting them. 

In any case, the traces of shit and piss—more than the decaying corpses—are what seem to be attracting flies and other insects the most. Like I said, no one talks about it much (why would they, I suppose…it’s not really something that would come up organically in a conversation), but the cemetery is a hotbed for bug activity. How could it not be? Sure, there are a lot of “cem plots” filled merely with bones, but there’s also plenty of “fresh meat,” too. “Meat” that hasn’t yet fully rotted (even though, for most flies, the more rotted, the better).

I never used to think about it that much until I started going to the cemetery more regularly. Because when you see cemeteries in the movies (whether it’s in Night of the Living Dead, The Omen, Hocus Pocus, Now and Then and, more recently, Lisa Frankenstein), they never play up the presence of insects. I suppose it wouldn’t be very “Hollywood” to do so. Would only make an “unpleasant” (read: reality-drenched) subject all the more unpleasant. Especially for those who already have denial issues with mortality in the first place. Best to sanitize the cemetery in all filmic contexts then. Alas, once you’re actually in one (alive or dead), it’s impossible to keep “cushioning” the truth. 

Lately, though, it seemed like more people were open to exposing themselves to what I call “mortality awakenings,” even if only for superficial reasons. Because I’ve been noticing more and more on my jaunts that the clientele at the cemetery is less “family and friends mourning” and more “randos like me.” Ones who are either just sitting there because it’s one of the few free “divertissements” left or because they’re blatantly taking photos/videos for social media. It’s lucky the dead can’t see what’s become of the world they once inhabited. Unless, of course, zombies are real—in which case, I guess they wouldn’t be “perceiving” much of the world anyway. I was starting to feel like that myself. Like bothering to be sentient and perceptive at all was more of a “detriment” than a “tool for success.”

When I walked, my hope was to clear my head of all the “noisy thoughts,” but instead, they only seemed to clamor for my attention even more. Yet when I went into the cemetery, for whatever reason, these thoughts dimmed…gradually faded out. Maybe it was the “salve” of being reminded that nothing I felt or thought or worried about would matter. The same went for every single human being on this Earth who came before me, and would come after.

The reminder of life’s meaninglessness was a balm to me, rather than a source of anxiety, as it was to most people. People who couldn’t bear the crushing weight of their own insignificance, so they turned to things like religion or philosophy or volunteer work or having a family or protesting against some injustice du jour. But all the noise, the attempts at “understanding one’s purpose” or “effecting change” would come to naught. Would result in the same “not with a bang but a whimper” outcome: death. 

I could home in on any name on any gravestone in this cemetery and be soberingly, brutally reminded of that. But of all the names I decide to pinpoint today, it’s “Carlos.” That’s all the grave says on it. Well, apart from his birth and death year: “1934-2012.” I can’t help but titter ever so slightly to myself when I think about the fact that a man managed to live through so much shit—the Great Depression, the Second World War, post-war nuclear threats, the Cold War, the assassination of JFK, the Vietnam War, the Reagan administration—and then, after all that, it was 2012 that killed him. Because yes, I’m still convinced the world ended that year and we’ve been in a simulation ever since. Carlos got out legitimately—killed off before the overlords reset everything to take a far gnarlier path. He was only seventy-eight though. He could have gone on so much longer.

For several moments, I stand there, just wondering what his “cause of death” (apart from 2012) was. Did he smoke too much? Did he have a poor diet? A weak constitution? A heart attack? I realize men are much more prone to dying ahead of their time than women, and I wonder if that’s their punishment for leading lives that are more inherently privileged or if, in some other way, it’s perhaps yet another blessing bestowed upon them. 

Posting up near Carlos’ grave seems like as good a place as any. So I move aside a hardened shit pile with my shoe, rip out some clumps of grass to put over it and sit down…right there on the insect-teeming ground. No blanket, no makeshift blanket via my sweatshirt—nothing. And I ponder who Carlos might have been. I don’t mourn for him, but feel a kind of envy. He escaped this life while it was still real.