Spirits of the Dead

 

I was taking a photo of the green velvety material that shields a grave and echoes the mountains, when a white man with white hair and white beard gets out of his car and approaches. "I'm here to do what you're doing," he says. He was about to take a photo of the sign "reserve your space now," nailed onto a palm; he said he was going to send it to his friends on the mainland. I told him about the black marble plaque I'd found at the back of the cemetery with the names of two living people on it, and an epitaph even. That plaque had disappeared (divorce erases more than death?). He started scrolling at his phone, clearly wanting to show me something. It was a photo of a mausoleum up the hill; you could see a cross, and then you could also see a green square blob in the right corner of the photo. "It keeps moving," he says. "Are these the spirits of the dead?" he asks, with a smile.