The Merry Cemetery

Jerome Lancaster had been standing in front of a heap of soil for several minutes before he noticed it was not a grave. He took a photograph anyway– then stood there a moment longer, not quite ready to move on. He had fallen out of love with life over the course of three years, little by little and then all at once, the way safety pins disappear around a house.

Him being here, 5000 miles away from home, in the Merry Cemetery, was nothing but a testament of love for his wife, Olivia. It was she who always had a particular interest in tombstone tourism and he just played along, making sure he caught the perfect angle of gothic mausoleums, ancient crypts and crooked, mossy thumb stones. For Olivia, cemeteries meant more than a simple burial ground – they felt like intimate invitations, to honor and contemplate the inevitable passage of time. Their honeymoon in Paris had included a full day dedicated to Père Lachaise, following a small-scale map while making sure they wouldn't miss any of the VIPs. How visibly distressed she'd been when they couldn't find Jim Morrison's grave, as if Jim Morrison were still a person waiting for them to join him over a glass of whisky, and they never arrived, and he was disappointed. He scoffed at her and told her not to worry, they would meet their host next time.

Jerome let out a sigh. That’s the thing about cemeteries, he thought. They are filled with people who thought they had more time.

The Merry Cemetery, the guide had explained, transforms death into celebration with its colorful crosses and satirical epitaphs. Jerome looked down at the grass, then up at the sky – a sea of blue that seemed to swallow him whole. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve, forced his hands steady and took out his glasses to read the carved scarlet letters on one of the crosses.

‘Beneath this heavy cross you saw

Lies my old mother-in-law.

Had she lived a tad much longer

I’d be buried, she’d be stronger.

Passing folks, please walk with care

Don’t disturb her, please don’t dare

She’ll wake and grumble, just as she

Did every day she lived with me’

As he stared at the epitaph, he realized he'd never felt this way about Lucy. Or told himself he hadn’t. Lucy, who had entrusted him with her only daughter, who sold her house so they could buy theirs, then lived nomadically—always a guest, never a host—while they nested. ‘Sometimes, it takes a village’ she’d said, while tilting his chin up in encouragement.

Lucy, who still calls to ask if he’s sleeping better, invites him over for homemade food and comments endlessly on his weight loss. She wants him to do well, to be well. This expectation drills into his chest.

He declines Lucy’s invitations because he sees Olivia in her eyes—the same shape, the same color—and because she still believes he can be saved. Watching her bury her daughter while still trying to mother him feels unbearably twisted.

Beyond that, he disliked her apartment. A rental. Small and crowded and foreign. It had order and discipline and yet somehow it looked wrong, like when a hermit crab finds a shell that fits well enough —protective but never quite right, chosen in haste rather than comfort. The neatness bothered him most; as if it was telling him, without words, that she’d had done well for herself. That she required nothing, needed nothing.

When their house was done, Olivia made a timid proposal about her mother moving in, to which he responded with a calm but firm tone that he needed his privacy. They never spoke of it again.

A sudden coolness in the air made him tug the last two buttons of his shirt against the chill. He gazed at the houses leaning against the cemetery walls. A few porches glowed under low-hanging bulbs, and he thought he heard a mother calling her children for dinner. Life continued here, unperturbed, moving steadily alongside those who remained in the afterlife.

A tall cross, capped with a small metal roof to protect the painting beneath, depicted a round, cheerful woman dressed head to toe in traditional attire. The image seemed to sway with movement, as if caught mid-step. Jerome squinted at the lettering and began to read the epitaph.

‘Dancing always lit my fire,

Seventy — I didn’t tire.

Even sick, I’d dance around;

Spinning in my evening gown

Now I’m sleeping, still as clay

Dance for me, in your own way.’

He stood there, staring at the painted woman and tried to recollect when was the last time he felt like dancing. Or felt like doing anything at all. He started nudging the empty plastic vase at the bottom of the cross with the point of his loafer.

Here was this woman, demanding he dance. Just like Olivia had. He resented her and this woman also, for making him promise something he had no desire to do. And the more he resented her, the guiltier he felt, the more annoyed he became, the more eagerly he wanted to dance the night away. But of course, he wouldn’t. Doing nothing at all felt comforting, lucid, familiar.

‘Play me Phil Collins and let's dance’ Olivia had said once, in one of her final days, right from that bed, webbed in hospital tubing. He'd lifted her body just enough so she could sit upward, leaning on the pillow, and he pressed his cheek to her cheek in gentle movements. She smelled of iron and salt.

‘Never lose your love for life,’ he remembers her whispering. Or something like that. ‘Never stop dancing, Jerome. Or I'll come down and haunt you!’

Hopefully, Olivia would hold her promise.

Jerome stumbled along the paved alley as he made his way back. He used the light on his phone to illuminate the path. Stars shone brightly overhead, but the moon was nowhere in sight. The narrow alleys twisted like a spiderweb, and the cemetery had darkened into black. He rushed toward the exit, his heart pounding faster. Oh, Olivia would have loved this—she would have said, ‘It’s not the dead you must fear, Jerome. It’s the living.’

At a turn, he bumped into one of the crosses canted toward the alley. His phone dropped to the ground at the base of the wooden structure, and its beam became a spotlight, revealing the last epitaph of the day.

‘Finally, I rest. In peace.

My husband could test the saints

With his nagging and complaints

Should he wander near this stone,

Tell him with a bitter tone —

This is MY place. Mine alone.’

Jerome straightened his back, brushed his fingers through his hair, and noticed a smile tucked into the corner of his lips. He set the thought aside, letting Olivia’s words linger in his mind:

‘Live well and never forget to laugh, Jerome,’ she had told him. ‘And when all is done and dusted, buy a resting place next to mine, but not so close—I need my space.’

Jerome thought of home. A four-bedroom, three-story house. Enough to roof a large family, with children and pets and a kind mother-in-law. None of which they ever had. All he had now was space—vast yet suffocating. Highly unnecessary.

He thought of Lucy again and felt a knot in his stomach. Olivia had asked once, then never again. He got his privacy. She got her dream house. Lucy got to come over once in a blue moon.

That's what parents were supposed to do. Help their children, then step back quietly. He'd believed that once.

He stood at the cemetery gates, looking back at the sea of blue crosses under starlight. Somewhere behind him, someone was laughing. Or maybe that was just the wind.

He’d barely taken two steps when his foot sank into something pulpy. Horse manure. He wiped the sole of his loafers on the grass, grumbling. The smell was acidic and sharp—the exact scent of the neighbor’s dog back home, a creature that had long treated his lawn as its toilet.

During the summer months, when the heat was unbearable, the smell persisted even longer. Those were the days when he preferred to stay inside, where the air was thin, recycled, and perfectly cold. He remembered sliding the shutters to see Olivia kneeling on the grass, keeping her hands busy while carrying extensive conversations with its owner.

He thumbed his wedding ring, sunk into the flesh, the skin pale and ridged around it. He straightened his jacket and adjusted the cuffs. Maybe he should sell that house.

He made a mental note to perhaps speak to a real estate agent once he got back and, with the money, buy Lucy a small house of her own.

His watch showed the local time – 10PM; it was 3PM back home. Lucy must be sitting on her couch watching her favorite shows for the thousand time. Volume down, as always, as if not to disturb anybody even if there was nobody to mind. Her hands resting patiently on her lap, shoulders down, eyes half closed. That old TV, with the big hunch at the back. She had it for years. She never once mentioned it.

He will buy Lucy a led TV.

The guide had mentioned another cemetery in this country, near the seaside—a resting place for a pirate named Cook, a princess, and lost sea wolves.