Sometimes I brought flowers.
Sometimes I talked.
“I saw your old friend at the grocery store,” I might say.
Or, “Your aunt still makes too much food every Thanksgiving.”
Once, after my car battery died, I stood beside his headstone and said, “You would have laughed at me. I spent 20 minutes looking for the hood release.”
Talking to a grave sounds strange until you have someone inside one.
Then it feels perfectly reasonable.
For the past several months, I noticed a dog there almost every single time, a scruffy mixed breed with no collar, always lying quietly beside his headstone, gone by the time I left.
The first time I saw him, I assumed he belonged to another visitor.
He was medium-sized, with uneven brown and gray fur that looked as if someone had trimmed it with kitchen scissors.
One ear stood upright while the other folded over at the tip.
