Place of Rest

Off a bustling highway down a lonely road, far away from the region's water sources, is a cracked parking lot, weeds beginning to squeeze past the concrete. There are only a few cars, parked between the slanted lines, but the lot is rarely empty, except at night. On one side are a couple of stalls, with rickety wooden doors and fans on top to wave the smell to the distance; next to them sit a clump of trash cans and recycling bins. The road ends here; the nearest residents are farmers with acres of ripe corn stalks. Past this, there is only a dirt path, trodden down by generations of feet large and small. The wind blows as the path's few travelers plod along, ruffling the leaves of the trees lining the sides.

When the path breaks out of the shadow of forest, it is to meet a brief clearing and then more trees, tall, sturdy ones and saplings newly planted. The grass here has been mowed, and people sit on it, under the shade of great spreading oaks and tall evergreens, watching squirrels camper above and listening to birds chirp in the warm air. Sunshine crosses through the leaves to play on the trunks and grass.

On the base of the trees, in the grass, are wooden signs.

The white ash of Cecil Rodney, beloved father and brother.

The American beech of Alicia Everett, who lit up every room.

Maybe it's her loved ones' imagination, but there always seems to be some dancing rays of sunshine above where her remains have given life to the beech.

It was her favorite tree.

Her young niece comes every week, riding the solar-powered shuttle provided for the commute. She comes bearing flowers and fertilizer, and as she sits under the sapling's shade and leans against the solid trunk, she feels like her aunt is there, watching her.

Perhaps she is.

One life gives birth to another. And a grieving father waters the grave of his son, dead too soon, and nobody tells him when they frantically replace the tree because it fell in a storm. If he knows, he doesn't think about it.

The gardeners who tend to the trees know everyone and their stories. They lay a mat for the niece who does her homework against her aunt's side, let the father tend to his son's tree, hang up sweets for the little boy who will grow up with his mother's elm. They know which tree was playful, which one liked to read, which one never complained, no matter how bad her pain. 

They know that the trees still are.

One life gives birth to another, as it returns to the earth. Life ends, and yet never ends.

As it should be, they say.

The grieving pay for the upkeep, but the trees are provided, unless someone requests a particular species, by the state. It's a natural right, a human right, to live forever. And one by one, the people have repopulated the earth with trees. The wealthy have turned the deserts into moist forests.

Life is an ever-expanding cycle.

And in dense clumps are sturdy, mature trees. They receive no human visitors, save for a few exceptions, but no one pities them, for they are plenty visited. They are the homes of many plants and animals, and insects as well, and they have moved far from grief.

Grief is finite. Life goes on forever.

And when the graveyard is deserted and the parking lot overrun by weeds, the trees will still be there, carrying life on their strong branches, with the sun playing between their leaves.