Death is coming. It’s something we grasp as soon as we’re old enough to understand the meaning of an end. And truly, throughout a thoroughly lived life, there’s several deaths: those of people you love, people you’ve just barely brushed past in the long stream of moments a life entails and, closer to home, several deaths for any one person.

What you once were is not who you are today, and is most certainly not the person you’ll be when your loved ones gather in a small, utilitarian office — maybe with nondescript photographs of flower varietals on the wall, over a table purchased at Costco, in metal folding chairs — to dispense with your remains.

Some might say that in those last moments of anyone’s life business, it’s not so much a question of who you are, but what.

The acerbic wit, happy drunk, insecure golfer in life is reduced in those last few official processes into a package that we sometimes ceremoniously send off into the unknown. Bones, a simple suit, ashes in a black plastic box, or, for the more sentimental, an urn engraved with rose petals and spears of grass. Most often, even still these days, Americans as a whole choose to bury their dead — as a body dressed as if for a Sunday church service, or as several pounds of powdery ash. Others bury a portion of their ashes to leave their loved ones at least one place on this earth where their name, and maybe a few other salient details, may forever be remembered, while the rest they scatter in favorite places. Forever, of course, meaning as long as there are people responsible for keeping the grounds clear of vines, tree roots that can displace and destroy the most durable boxes hewn by human hands, and, perhaps the most threatening, the inevitable wash of forgetfulness, as those who died sink further and further into the past. Emotional, familial connections that once corded the living to the dead like a mean sailor’s hemp rope fray with the passage of decades and centuries. Soon, the proudest monuments carved from forever stone by artisanal masterminds will sink and skew, lean back against the pressures of gravity and a quaking earth, then, finally disappear. And so, regrettably, it must come to pass that all traces of that individual -– a man or woman as real, rash and uncomfortable; proud, garrulous, and prejudiced; sweet, tanned and sensual as any of us — fade and are forgotten.

Cemeteries are the temporary guardian against this oblivion. Here, families plant their loved ones’ remains in the hope of sprouting recollections and peace, honestly more for themselves than those they bury. With plaques and stones set, sometimes unevenly, about the grounds, people attempt to proclaim, for history’s sake, that this person did in fact live, love, and die. They deserve to be remembered.

The details grow fainter with time, and sometimes those at rest here are eventually reduced to only names and dates. But walking through the rows of monuments, one can’t help but muse on the vast trove of stories that weave through all the caskets and urns like so many of those unsettling tree roots.

At 38, I’m a man whose already lived several lives. Most recently, I buried a version of myself that knew only craving, and desperation. On the other hand, some six months ago, my wife of 17 years and I had a fourth child, Juniper Katherine, and neither she nor any of her siblings have had to live with that old me for years.

Some call it recovery. I call it rebirth. I want to write about it. I want to write about the stories that twine in and out, between and around all the bones and ashes in these cemeteries where I now make my living. As long they let me, I’ll do it here.

Two days ago, an older woman with a ready smile and sad eyes needed help finding an old friend among the markers here at Sunrise Cemetery. I typed the man’s name in the computer, briefly consulted some old maps that have suffered the scuff of many hands, and walked with her out into the cemetery’s center section, where we wandered for a fair bit among the names and dates. Though she’d moved away decades ago, she called out several times names of old friends, classmates, maybe even a lover or two, before we found the grave she sought.

Here, she paused, drew an unsteady breath, and politely evaded my questions about her connection to the man.

He was an old friend, she said, and died young. It was a tragic thing, really.

I’ve been on this Earth long enough to sense when I’m no longer needed, so I excused myself and left her there and returned to the office. An hour later, I caught a glimpse of her walking tiredly away. Clouds and the late hour had made quick work of the daylight, and rain had started to fall. Bareheaded under the big sky on our cemetery hill, she’d obviously been on a journey through time and memory, and was happier for it.

###

James Faulk is a writer, family man and cemetery worker. He can be reached at faulk.james@yahoo.com.

On Sunday, Oct.26 at the Masonic/Oddfellows Cemetery on Rohnerville Road, the Fortuna Cemetery District will host Grave Matters and Untimely Departures, a collection of stories told about the lives and deaths of some of those who call that cemetery home. Hear them tell their own stories of hard living and dying. Tickets are available for $15 in advance at the Fortuna Chamber of Commerce, with tours starting at 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. All proceeds benefit the Fortuna Cemetery District, a non-profit organization responsible for the management and care of seven cemeteries in the Eel River Valley.