During much of the ride, he felt like an idiot. Who drives to the grave of a girl they haven’t seen in years? he thought to himself. Visiting the grave certainly wasn’t going to make anything better — or worse, for that matter. Nevertheless, he felt spiritually compelled to go.
The morning following his arrival, Adam bundled himself in layers of sweats and flannels for the trip to Zoë’s grave in Winnipeg’s only Jewish cemetery. The plot was far from the entrance to the cemetery. His boots crunched against the hard, packed snow that covered the path that wrapped through the cemetery. Adam approached Zoë’s grave, knelt down, and wiped away the light dusting of snow that had blown onto it overnight. He expected something profound to happen when he arrived, but everything was still. He rubbed the tombstone gently.
“I’m so sorry, Zoë,” he began. “I hope you know how much you’ve always meant to me. I measured ‘em all against you, and nobody ever came close. I’m not mad or sad that we had something at a time when it was impossible to fully embrace it. I’ll never forget when you told me that things would have been different with us under different circumstances. I just came to let you know that you will always be in my heart.”
He stood silently in front of Zoë’s grave for another few minutes. The silence was interrupted by the faint sound of Frank Sinatra singing. Adam followed the music, but he couldn’t determine where it originated. Except for him, the cemetery was empty, and the caretaker’s warming shed was at least two hundred yards away. The music seemed to be coming from somewhere, but it was simply too cold for Adam to care for long about its source.
Adam took one last sweeping view of the cemetery and Zoë’s place in it and wondered why Zoë had died. Why her? The wonderful girl with flowing red hair and soft peach skin now lay beneath a headstone in a frozen cemetery. Why would God let him fall in love for possibly the only time when he was 15? It all seemed like such a waste.
By the time Adam got to his car, he felt better. At least he had proven to himself he was capable of being in love. Inside his car, Adam noticed that all of the CDs he’d brought along for the trip were neatly stacked. On the top were Frank Sinatra, Bobby Darin, and Tony Bennett. Adam didn’t recall tidying up the car.
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