The Cemetery

Yesterday, our pet lizard Sherbet died. After dinner we had a solemn tear-filled burial in the backyard. It made me think of the many pets I buried as a child on the hill behind my parents’ home. Sometimes when we visit and I am outside I walk back to my pet cemetery and think about the tiny bodies beneath the ground. The headstones I drew painstakingly with marker on rounded stones and placed with great care have been erased by time. Now beneath the trees that mark the spot there is a covering of moss and only a few headstones remain in view. I see a scattered vestige of what it was and know it bears significance to only me. No random traveler walking passed the spot would recognize it for what it is; a place of reverence and memory.