The weather today was the same as it was on that day: cloudy, only colder. Women in black dresses and black veils and men in black suits with matching ties gathered around a grave as a priest read a passage from the Bible.
Compassion.
Greed.
Betrayal.
Fatherly.
Those were some of the epitaphs Lucy had read on her way to Mark's grave. She had also recognized the headstone of Mark's grandfather; it was in the same row, twenty-four graves away. Counting the headstones was all Lucy could do to distract herself from the mournful atmosphere. She distanced herself from the small crowd of friends and family of Mark. Lucy didn't know most of them, but she saw his parents and grandmother. His mother howled into the chest of her husband, who wrapped his arms around her. Even with the space between him and Lucy, she could see the shimmer from the streams of tears that had fallen from his eyes. His grandmother stood behind them, evidence of her heartbreak from her bowed head and unopened eyes; she almost looked as if she was deep in prayer.
They were part of the few who stood before the grave after the service met its end. They remained where they stood while a nosy few peered into the rectangular hole to steal a glimpse of where Mark's casket would be once dirt was piled over it. Overlooking his grave was the headstone with an epitaph that Lucy had no participation in selecting. But with the majority of the crowd departed, Lucy was able to read the epitaph for the first time and see how Mark within this nameless grave would be known to the world:
Heroism.
Lucy hadn't cried in days—she thought she had no more tears to cry. Yet as she stared at the epitaph chiseled into the glossy headstone, an unseen thumb made a smear of it. The tears Lucy had thought dried up returned in a salty torrent that stung her eyeballs and spilled down her chilled cheeks. Her nostrils, which were already stuffed because of the cold air, oozed a globule of mucus that Lucy had to suck back up to keep from dripping. She dragged her jacket's sleeve across her eyes, catching the tears, but the lost supply was restocked in an instant.
The strength in her knees gave out, and Lucy collapsed to the ground, dead blades of grass sprouting between one gloved hand while the other muffled her sobs. Though she could barely speak, her mouth refusing to close and strings of saliva sprouting from a larger pool, she muttered what she could of curses—she cursed the driver whose recklessness stole a life before it had the chance to leave a real mark on the world. She cursed the cemetery for remembering Mark for the last thing he did and nothing else. And she cursed the world for being so cruel and unkind to its denizens.
In her unhinged state of mind, Lucy could have sworn that she had heard four tolls of the bell, signaling the end of Mark's funeral and welcoming the latest addition to a cemetery of nameless graves overlooked by the Cessation Bell.
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