Graves and cemeteries are funny things.

Acres of open land with bodies just decomposing all throughout it.

Normally this is disgusting and if you really think about it everyone should just be burned.

Turned into clean dust that you can spread over the ocean. Isn't that nice?

I guess it's love. Love that makes us go broke burying a loved one.

Love that keeps the skin from burning.

Love, that which keeps us from moving on completely.

I guess in the movies I've learned that visiting a grave is serious business. You pick the weeds out of the ground, you put down some flowers, and you talk. You talk as if the persons simply on vacation even though they're not. I used to visit my fathers grave. I've probably done it 3 times in my life.Each time whether I was five or seven i would glance idly look a round at the grass and wonder what was so special? I didn't care. This person was foreign. This person simply died of a heart attack. What was the case?

I guess that now things have changed. Suddenly I'm a lot closer to my father even more than i would have thought possible. I never knew him. He died too quickly. He left too early. He felt too deeply. Technically I've had 17 years to mourn and sigh and wish I had one more day. But in more than one way my father died a year ago when my mom cried and told me a story about a year in Nebraska and my fathers final days. It was weird then. For one i was a bit relieved because now i knew what I was feeling was real. I thought about all those times they asked me if anyone in my family ever suffered through depression or off-ed themselves and I'd say "no, no, just me". Finally I wasn't imagining my own feelings. Then I felt sad. I blamed my mom a bit. Then I was mad. No letter to me. No nothing left for me. The baby. The baby whom to many would have been a decent reason to live. But it wasn't enough. Suicide really is a selfish act. And no matter how many people say "FML" or "kill yourself" or joke around like that it will never be funny to me NEVER. because each time they say it and laugh out loud all I can think about is my father in a hotel room with a gun. Maybe crying. Or maybe feeling final relief. I'll never know.

It's sad now because I know that if anyone would know how I feel it's him. Were very good liars. He was a doctor, a good one, friendly and so on. Who ever knew he thought the way he did? It's not that I don't know that other people feel the way I did and sometimes do. It's just that he would know what the bell jar is like. He would know what it's like to constantly question if you re even breathing. If you are alive. But the decision was made and what am I to do?

My father is buried in cemetery in Washington D.C. My mother no longer knows the name of it or where he's even buried. We haven't been there in years. We haven't been there since 2002 when my grandma on my fathers side died. No wait, actually we went there in 2003 when my Uncle basically realized he couldn't live without her support and starved himself. Basically I guess I'm saying that I'm fucked. But let me get to what this whole thing is about. Someday I'd like to drive there on my own or with someone who even knows this about me. Someone who really knows who i am. I'd like to clean the grave and maybe bring a picture where I look like I'm having the time of my life. And i just want to sit there and talk for hours about my life and what i''m doing and music. I want to sit there all day. Then I want to cry and go home. That will be it.

Technically I shouldn't care to much about the talking. I mean to me death is finite. Once you die that's it. you rot in the ground and your misery is over. Eternal sleep. So when I go there one day and start talking away I know that no one will be listening. I'll just be talking to a patch of dirt.

But I guess that's what love is. I guess that's how I know that I love that man even though I can't remember him. Love can't be burned. I don't know if anyone will ever understand what this feels like. I don't think you can unless youre me. But I think about this every day of my life. Sometimes I don't think anyones worth it. So I don't care who reads this. I just know that I wanted to write this down somewhere as the thought was flowing through my head. And i Think I captured it.

-Briana.