“The Graves of Saint Paul”

© 2025 by Michael L. Utley

My mother lay in the ground at my feet beneath sun-bleached summer grass and faded plastic flowers and a headstone I hadn’t seen for nearly ten years. Her name, Victoria, clung to the gray stone above a bas-relief of pines and wild flowers and blue birds. She’d asked for a cross on her headstone—made it clear to everyone that she desired her faith to be front and center after she died—but my father, in his infinite malice and pettiness, had chosen some random wilderness picture rather than honor her wish. Just one more reason I hated him.

And now, his name sullied my mother’s headstone.

Ten years. Ten years of shame and regret. I hadn’t visited my mother since the headstone was erected shortly after her burial. For months after her death, I made excuses to avoid the trip to town, to the cemetery. At first, it was too raw, too soon. Maybe in a few weeks, a month or two, then I could do it. And then my life flipped upside-down again and I relocated out-of-state unexpectedly and that felt like a more legitimate reason, but I always intended to visit her grave like a good son should. Except…except maybe I wasn’t such a good son after all.

When my father died two years later, that settled the issue, and I knew I’d never be able to look at that headstone now that it was desecrated by his name.

David. Wife-beater. Monster.

And yet, here I was, standing at the foot of the grave that held my mother’s bones and my father’s ashes, the midday sun hidden behind a thick overcast sky, rivulets of sweat accumulating beneath my baseball cap and running down my back, the world almost completely silent in my deafness, the scent of grass clippings in the still air. Here they were, together again, this time for eternity. My mother could never escape my father in life, and in death he had finally ensnared her forever.

I stood there, motionless as the stones that rose from this small acreage of sorrow, my mind blank, my eyes dry (still no tears after all these years–what’s wrong with me?), and my dead heart buried in my chest. I don’t know how long I was lost in that moment—time flows differently in places of death; sometimes it doesn’t flow at all. Not knowing what else to do, I whispered, “I’m sorry, Mom…” and lowered my head. I couldn’t bear the thought of my mother witnessing my guilt-ridden face anymore.

A few moments later, I noticed an old fellow approaching, moving gingerly among rows of crosses not far from my parents’ plot. He wore dull green overalls and a sweat-stained cap, the name Pablo embroidered on the left side of his chest, grass-stained work gloves jammed in his pocket, the butt of a Marlboro between thin lips, eyes buried in a crevasse of wrinkles. He stood beside me for a long moment, studying my parents’ headstone, then glanced at me and spoke.

I motioned that I was deaf—a little finger-dance between my right ear and lips, and pulled a small tablet and pen from my pocket and mimed for him to write instead of speak. He smiled and nodded and wrote, “Your family?”

After a pause, “My parents.”

Another nod, and this time he scrawled, “Victoria is a beautiful name, amigo.”

I looked at him closely. He was old, perhaps my parents’ age (if they still lived), and I wondered why the town would allow a fellow who was obviously pushing his mid-80s to tend the cemetery.

As if reading my mind, the man wrote, “I come here every day. Tend the plots, cut a little grass, gather the broken flowers—the dead deserve better, yes?–and talk to my Maria.” He pointed a crooked finger toward a cluster of pines and crosses. His attention lingered there for a bit, then he looked at me, his expression indeterminate, as though he were in deep thought.

“Your father,” he wrote. “David. I knew him.”

A gust of wind kicked up a few plastic flowers from a nearby grave, scattering them across the walking path. The man took a drag on his cigarette and eyed me intensely, then put pen to paper.

“Yes, I knew your father. Ese malvado matón… That cruel bully…”

I felt a headache germinating inside my skull and closed my eyes. A memory—completely unbidden—flashed in my mind, startling in its vividness and urgency.

“Michael.” My father calling me. I am twelve years old. My father sits on the sofa, an old photo album spread open on his lap. It is early evening, my mother cooking dinner in the kitchen, my sisters chattering at the table. Some random sitcom plays on the hulking console television, a comedy laugh track in the background. I go to my father, terrified. What have I done this time? I wonder. He is grinning. This frightens me even more. “Look here,” he says, pointing a grease-stained finger at an old black-and-white photograph. My father smells of diesel and sweat and cigarettes. I am wary of his every move. It is a school picture dated 1949. My father’s second-grade class photograph. A dozen children stand stiffly, awkwardly, at attention before a run-down one-room shack, an elderly woman with a severe expression hovering beside them. “That’s me, right there.” His dirty finger moves to a dark-haired, cowlicked boy in a soiled white t-shirt with a missing incisor on the left. On the television, a man is arguing with a woman about a dog. “Now, see this little Mexican kid here?” He points to a diminutive Latino boy huddling in a ball at the far right, a dull expression on his grainy round face. “I used to beat the hell out of that kid every day at school.” My father grins wider, shark-like, and laughs. On the television, canned applause explodes and a commercial break begins. I swallow. I stare at the small boy with tousled black hair and knee-patched trousers and striped shirt, and all I can say is, “What was his name?” And my father beams at me. “Who gives a shit?”

I began to speak, but the old man waved me off. “Ah…it was many years ago, do not worry,” he wrote. “Life is long and hard, and we learn much or we don’t learn anything. Who’s to say?”

“Pablo. Your name is Pablo…”

A nod, a flick of the pen. “Yes, little Pablo, el niño pequeño. I was small, but quick. And I survived.”

“My father tormented you, and all these years I wondered who you were, what your name was, and why.”

“Amigo,” he wrote, “sometimes there is no why. Sometimes, there are no answers. Sometimes we must endure until we can fight back or escape.” His eyes softened. “If you’re looking for logic or sense in this lifetime, you’re on a fool’s errand. Just live. Just let go and live.”

“I don’t think I can…”

The old man flipped the page over and scribbled, “Look out there at all these graves, all these lives. Years and decades and centuries, gone and forgotten. But not quite, for old Pablo remembers them, old Pablo cares for them. When we are remembered, we live, and when we are remembered fondly, we live gloriously! Your mother–” and the old man motioned toward her headstone, “she is not gone. She remains forever in your heart because you love her. And she knows this.” He looked at me firmly. “And no matter what your father has done, he will never change her love for you. Trust me on this, amigo. I am old and wise, although my Maria might disagree with the latter.” He winked.

I glanced again at my mother’s name. It looked beautiful on the headstone. I will remember you well, Mom, I said to myself. The old man penned one final note on the tablet then returned it to me, squeezed my shoulder, and headed back to his Maria beneath the pines.

Just live. Just let go and live.

…..