Bury Me in the Valdez Graveyard, the Place the Glacier Used to Be
by Mar Prax
Sometimes I fear that when I die, my body will be taken to Minnesota. I'll be buried in a plot with dozens of other Praxes, strangers with blood like mine, a woman with my same name. I’ve been there once, with my father and flowers and tears he tried not to shed mourning people I’ve never met. He pointed out which family member was who. There was a second uncle or cousin, someone he remembered from stories his mom or dad told. And all I can think of is how dry the ground is. Grass peeks out, perfectly clipped like a fresh shave against ashy skin. This ground stretches, adorned by moles of cement markers with perfectly pressed lettering. It’s all I can see. That and an empty gazebo with spiderwebs blowing in the wind.
I wonder where they’d bury me, dragging my body, my spirit kicking and screaming inside, to lay me in a place I barely know. That’s where the Praxes are. That’s where my family members, the ones that are alive, distant as they are, can visit me. I guess I could get to know all the family members I never met. Mingle with them at the graveyard. I wonder if they’d still be holding onto the idea of a Catholic heaven. What would they be wearing? Maybe dolled up in the finest wear from the sixties to the early two thousands. My family would probably lay me to rest in some dress. I’d like to think it’d be yellow, my favorite and not so sad as black. I hope they bury me in earrings, the beaded flower ones and butterfly studs on my doubles. I won’t be able to feel them poke anymore. It’d be a while before they could take off my rings, stuck on my fingers by death bloat, copper leaving green stains when they’re finally gone. I could see them ending up in my mother’s or sister’s jewelry box, looking much more valuable than they are. My mother wouldn’t wear them. My sister would.
I think about my mother’s ring, the one that barely fits on my pinky. The one that I stole out of my mother’s jewelry box with only the slightest twinge of guilt as I never once saw my mom wear it. I never wear it either. It’s a gaudy piece that gets stuck when I run my hands through my hair. It belongs to some relative, close or distant, of my mother’s and I guess mine that I never bothered asking about. I wonder how often that woman wore her ugly ring. Did she die with it on? Did they have to wait to take it off this once slender-fingered woman? How odd her hands must have looked to her family, a woman with nimble fingers apt for needlepoint now bulging with near invisible knuckle creases. I imagine she’s buried in Petaluma, California, a town my mom’s side of the family has been dying in for over a century, in a grave I’ve never visited in a plot I fear going to almost as much as the one in Minnesota. But me and her don’t share a last name, only her ring. When all that’s left of me is jewelry in a box and my name on a headstone, no one will know we’re related.
If I have the time, I’d like to dig my own grave. I’d purchase a spot in the graveyard back home, the one with baby dolls and stained glass and bear prints adorning dead grass. I’d go there one afternoon with a beer, a friend, and a shovel. The friend’d sit down on a lawn chair, playing some song we really liked back in middle school and after not listening to it for ten years it sounded good again. I’d bite my shovel into the dirt and pretend like it was another day shoveling snow out of the driveway or maybe hollowing out an ice cave. I’d dig six feet down, sweat covering my face and rolling down my shoulders, probably bitch a little about how I didn’t understand why graves had to be so deep. Then I’d try to jump out, get my elbows on the surface and pull myself up, insisting I don’t need help until my fingernails are breaking on the soil. My friend would pull me up, offer me another beer, and I’d wipe away dirt-sweat that’d become mud on my face. I’d tell everyone about it. I bought this plot and I dug my grave. Put me there, nowhere else. I don’t even need a coffin. Drop my body in and cover me up. Maybe sprinkle in a few seeds, a dash of garlic and cajun seasoning so I can joke in the afterlife about being a flavorful fertilizer. Leave me there. Let flowers grow. Put my name there if you want, a few words about who I was. Make it artsy, colorful, like everyone else in this graveyard, like the friends and not family I’m buried with. But don’t put in too much effort or, God forbid, money. I’ll be underwater soon enough. I can see the ocean, right past the baseball fields. It’s getting closer. Water will return, like the glacier with the ghost of its mouth at the graveyard. Slowly retreating until saltwater meets and I’m no longer even a memory.
Mar Prax is a writer from Valdez, Alaska. She currently studies creative writing as an MFA student at the University of Arkansas. She is published in LitSite Alaska and New Plains Review.
