When you see a church, there is usually a gravesite near it.
Most older churches have the original graves very close. You know the ones. They are cover with moss, hard to read, but they do have a certain beauty about them.
A bit further back, you have the new, older section.
In this section there is family, preparing for when both halves of the couple go. There are names with dates half filled in. Then names where dates are chiseled in.
The sad ones are the tiny graves, that hold a child, and next to the tiny grave, another one, a couples grave with no dates on it.
Graves are not visited like they once were. Some as a family outing. Some to speak to an old love, a brother, or friend.
The world keeps getting faster. Those days of meeting to remember old family members are getting farther and farther apart.
Some believe if you visit a grave it makes you feel closer to the perosn's who's body is resting there.
One such grave in the old, new part, of my church, holds a special grave. The grave of my best friend that died when she and I were six.
She lived a field and two houses away. In our neighborhood, you were not afraid to walk that far, so we were inseparable.
Her older brother was my brothers best friend. They were the same age too. A perfect world to live in for the two of us always surrounded by love.
When it snowed we just called on our brothers to come help build the snow fort or help get us out when it came crashing down. They were our older brothers and their job was to protect us. That was the simple fact.
It was the best of both worlds because if it did collapse, it would have been their fault if we got hurt.
To lose your other half as a child, the friend that was always there, and would always be there, is not an easy thing to get passed, when you are six years old.
When someone that knows all your secrets is suddenly gone, and you find yourself all alone, with no one to talk to about silly things, it changes how you react to people that want to be your friend.
You learn to show that life is okay on the outside but in reality, you are very lonely for your best friend.
To say I have felt her spirit when I have visited her grave would not be correct.
The feeling for me and me alone is one of loneliness. The same loneliness I felt the day I saw her die.
The day a part of me died too.
No one at the age of six should have to watch their best friends blood run down a hill, from her head being crushed beneath a bus, on our way home from school.
So for me, graves are not for the living in a good way, but more of a lawn full of sadness.
Sadness that gets attached to the church when I go to pray.
I understand the reasons for churches and graves so close to each other and the comfort many people get from it.
In my mind, my world, even though I can not see her grave from the steps of the church, I know just where it is tucked away in that new, old part of the graveyard.
