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By the end of summer, Emma Lee had settled into her life quite comfortably. She’d turned eighteen, so she’d been able to trade her under-the-table and unpredictable income for an actual job within walking distance of home; her morning and evening walks across the cemetery became part of her “commute.”
Mayumi tried to get her to sign up for classes at the local community college; they’d registered during their senior year and just needed to build their schedules. To both of their surprise, however, Emma Lee just wasn’t interested. She went to the campus with Mayumi—for moral support, she said—and sat reading in the grass while Mayumi met with her counselor. But she refused to set up a meeting herself. She wanted to take a year off.
“You’re going to end up flipping burgers your whole life,” Mayumi said.
“I’m not flipping burgers,” Emma Lee said. “Besides, it’s just a year.”
“My mom says people who take a year off never go back.”
Emma Lee shrugged. “I’ll be fine.”
“This is weird,” Mayumi said. “I’m going to school and you’re not? Who’s going to make me study?”
“It’ll be fine. You’ll be fine.”
And it was fine, at least through Christmas, when Emma Lee started to feel a little antsy. She toyed with the idea of signing up for the Spring semester but decided against it. Sure, her job was just data entry—the office version of flipping burgers, she supposed—but it paid fairly well, and she liked being able to pay rent to Mr. Matsuo, even though he insisted it wasn’t necessary.
So, she decided, she’d keep working for now. She’d build her savings a little. Maybe she’d get a car so Mayumi wouldn’t have to shuttle her around town. She had plenty of time before she needed to bow to the pressures of early morning classes, homework, assigned readings, contrived essays.
Then the coronavirus hit.
For Emma Lee, it felt like running downhill too fast, like those times, as a child, when she thought she was finding her footing, that her lengthening strides and flailing arms were going to avert disaster—until she found herself pitching face-first into the dirt.
She found the news hard to believe at first. While the number of cases, and the number of deaths, rose exponentially across the nation, not to mention the world, the numbers in her relatively isolated county remained low: only a handful of cases, no hospitalizations to speak of. Only one death.
Still, most people understood that this was temporary. (At least, Emma Lee hoped it was most people; the unbelievers were loud and, at times, seemed everywhere.) Pretty much everything closed down. For the first few weeks, Emma Lee was allowed to work from home, but the company’s workload dropped so dramatically they ended up laying her off. She wasn’t surprised; she even understood the decision. She appreciated her boss’s praise for her hard work, and the promise to hire her back once things were back to normal. But as she watched the news, especially the news coming out of New York, she wondered if things would ever actually get back to normal.
The college closed its campus just a few weeks into the new semester, shifting to “distance learning.” Emma Lee was glad she’d procrastinated. She knew she’d have done just fine, but watching the way the college floundered through the transition made her feel sorry for the students—especially for Mayumi, who was, if nothing else, a social animal. It wasn’t clear that she’d make it through the rest of the semester, even with Emma Lee’s help.
The more The Plague (as Mayumi called it) closed its grip on the world, the more grateful Emma Lee became for how little her life changed. And her life really hadn’t changed that much at all, certainly not enough to explain the low-level but insistent anxiety she carried with her: the tightness in her chest, the elevated heart rate, the difficulty concentrating or falling asleep.
To counteract the anxiety, she spent more time among the dead. It seemed to help. Part of it was the exercise, she knew, but part of it was the fact that she never read the names and dates and epitaphs silently anymore; she read them all aloud now, solemnly and patiently. She started again in the northeast corner of the cemetery and moved systematically, pausing before every monument or headstone or lawn marker, determined to pass over no one, to recognize every death represented by these slabs of granite or marble or slate, these brass or bronze or stone plaques.
She always ended the session at Emily’s grave, sitting or lying quietly in the grass as she processed the day’s ritual.
And it had indeed become a ritual, her ritual—as devoid of meaning as any, she supposed, yet she felt something stir in her: a coming to terms with mortality, perhaps, at a time when mortality was demanding attention, and in a way that she had only rarely experienced before, in a small handful of her books.
She figured mortality was probably a good thing to come to terms with.
Mayumi and Emma Lee sat “socially distanced,” at opposite corners of the picnic table. Mayumi’s semester had ended a couple of weeks ago, but she was still complaining. She’d made it through, but it looked like the next semester was going to be taught online as well.
“I hate it,” she said.
“Yeah,” Emma Lee said.
“Are you signing up for next year?”
Emma Lee shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe I should take a year off,” Mayumi said.
“These are hard times,” Emma Lee said. “I wouldn’t blame you.”
Mayumi turned herself sideways on the bench, half facing her friend.
“Tomorrow’s graduation, you know,” Mayumi said.
“At the high school?”
“Sucks for them.”
“It really does,” Emma Lee agreed.
“Taylor was wondering if we’re having another party next door.”
“Really?”
“I know,” Mayumi said. “Everything’s so fucked up. I think he just wants something normal.”
“Yeah,” Emma Lee said.
“Not that a graveyard party is normal,” Mayumi said.
Emma Lee laughed.
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Story by Greg Kemble. Art and animation by John David Irvine (thejohnirvine.com).
In addition to reading the series on the blog, you can enjoy “Emily’s Grave” in a few other formats (you’ll find links to all of these versions at the Emily’s Grave (a story) page):
- Videobook (YouTube) – I commissioned my friend and former student John David Irvine—now an award-winning animator—to create an atmospheric animation to accompany the audio version of the story.
- Audiobook (mp3) – Recorded by the author (that’s me!). You can listen to it on the blog or download it.
- Print version (PDF) – If you prefer to read written text, you can view or download a PDF version.
Tip Jar – Pay what you like, if you like.
A-and there’s merch! If you like John’s cover art, check out the shirts, coffee mugs, stickers (and more!) at Redbubble.
About the author (that’s me!)
Close-to-retirement English prof.
Occasional musician, blogger, and writer.
Mildly Introverted, mostly harmless.
About the artist
Multi award-winning artist/animator/filmmaker John David Irvine is known for his unique style of handcrafted animation and darkly surreal imagery. His cryptic work explores identity, queerness, and generational trauma, wading into the everyday horrors that undulate beneath the veneer of the mundane. His award-winning short film COMMON MONSTERS is currently being expanded into his feature film directorial debut.
Check him out at https://thejohnirvine.com.
“Emily’s Grave” © 2021 (text) and © 2023 (audio and video) by Greg Kemble are licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0