A graveyard is, perhaps, an unlikely place to find enlightenment, but that’s where I found it. A
piece of it, anyway.
I’d gone to Jay’s funeral service at St. Anne’s Church in Annapolis, but arrived late and found
just about every seat in the place taken. Half the city must have been there, and I don’t know
why, but I felt somehow out of place with all the public mourners. I guess I wanted a private
moment, just between us. I’d lost a very good friend. We’d become that. He’d been like an
older brother to me.
I left the church and decided to have my personal “service” for Jay, my own private good-bye,
at his gravesite later that day. Two hours later, when I guessed that everyone would have
been to the grave and left, I made my way to St. Anne’s Cemetery. My guess was right.
There was no one there. I set out to find Jay’s grave and say my farewell. Except I couldn’t
find the gravesite. Anywhere. I looked at row after row of headstones, but no ELMER (JAY) JACKSON,
JR. I doubled back and looked again. Nothing.
I was becoming frustrated. Maybe I should have stuck with the funeral party after all. Had I
gotten the wrong cemetery? Was I just not looking in the right place? I really wanted to say
goodbye to Jay. I really wanted this moment. And now it was starting to drizzle. The wind had
come up, and it looked like a storm was brewing. C’mon, Jay, I shouted inside my head,
where are you?
You know how, when you’re at a traffic light and you want it to change and it isn’t changing,
you shout, C’mon, change, darn it, inside your head? That’s what I was doing here. You don’t
really expect the light to change, right then, right there, in that instant. And you don’t really
expect to get an answer in a cemetery. (In fact, you’d rather not.)
Well, I did. And it scared the wits out of me.
Over here.
That’s all he said. But it was his voice, Jay’s, as crisp and as clear as a bell. It came from
directly behind me, and I whipped around so fast I almost left my shoes.
There was no one. Nothing.
I could have sworn I’d heard Jay.
Then I heard him again.
Over here.
This time it came from further away, in the direction I was now facing, but up, over a small
knoll. A chill ran up my back. It was Jay’s voice. It wasn’t someone who sounded like Jay. It
was Jay
But there was no one there. So then I thought that maybe a groundskeeper had wandered in.
Maybe he saw me looking around and guessed that I was searching for a freshly turned
grave. Maybe he was someone who did sound a lot like Jay.
But there just was no one around. I really wanted there to be someone around. I really did.
Because this voice was not something I was imagining. I heard it, as loudly and clearly as I
heard the beating of my heart a moment later.