Famous graves

One of my favorite authors is Pam Houston. If you ever get a chance, search out her book “Cowboys are my Weakness”, it’s probably the best collection of short stories that you are ever going to find. I had the chance once to meet her and listen to her talk about writing. She gave me one of my favorite quotes of all time, “Someone once asked me how much truth is in my fiction and I said, ‘It’s about 75 percent true.’ Now I’ve finished my non-fiction book and people ask me how much truth is in it and I thought for a second and went, ‘About 75 percent.’”

So, this is fiction but there is a hell of a lot of truth in it. And it will be for most (or maybe all) of you, your first introduction to Brian, my literary alter ego. And I’m almost certain this is the first time I’ve ever shown this story to anyone. Think of it what you will.




“What would you like your gravestone to read?”
It was an interesting question, coming from a girl I had only met a week ago. We were walking through Westminster Abbey, just another pair of backpack wearing tourists mulling about the famous graves. We were here, not on a lark, but with the knowledge that this was our last day in London, and our last day together.
“Well, Brian, what would it be?”
She was just someone I ran into on a tour I had convinced myself to join. Just an effort to avoid all of the headaches of travel and force myself to be social. One of those things where you spend a lot of money to be thrown in a bus with a bunch of people you do not know and are forced to spend a lot of time with for your own pleasure. It is like a miniature version of hell, with all of the appropriate claustrophobia and terror of dying far from home.
“This place is just amazing, can you even imagine that we are walking pass the graves of royalty?”
Tina had been one of the few truly interesting people I had even met in my travels. Most had been a little flighty, or down right annoying, but she was down to earth and honest. Or at least had an interest in finding out what happens in other corners of the world. See what the other side has in their medicine cabinets I guess.
“Look, there is the chair where they crown the king. You can even see where people have carved their initials in it, just trying to get their own little piece of immortality.”
We just kept on running into each other, every time we were given time to be on our own we would gravitate to the same places. After a while we just started to go off together, if only to save the embarrassment of meeting each other farther down the line. So, we ended up here, walking the most hallowed ground of England, beaten and battered, wondering what the world would have in store for our future.
“You know,” I said searching the walls for a familiar name, “places like these are all about the past. There is no future here. It’s a time capsule, a place to hold your memories. You see the name and the statue and you remember the person as they were in their prime.”
“It’s neat that way. Look, there is Sir Laurence Olivier...”
“See, now when you look at that what do you imagine. I see this great actor, striding across the stage, bellowing Shakespeare’s greatest lines. Who has a monument over there even though he isn’t buried here. Still, you see Olivier as a young man, and not as an old, over acting guy in a dress in Clash of the Titans.”
“That is a very strange sentiment, Brian. I don’t know if that is what I want to remember you by, raving about actors.”
“I know, it’s just, it’s just.... In a couple of hours you’ll be off to the airport and I’ll walk back to my hotel wondering what would have happened. Wondering if there was some way if we were in the same place at the same time if things might work out and we’d, you know, date, get married, have 2.5 children.”
“Which would never work because, because...”
“Because the stars have aligned against us and we are only going to have a few moments together, not enough to fall in love, not enough to despise each other, just enough to have a sense of wonder about what it might have been. And I just look around here and I see what has been and I just wish that for once I would know what has happened instead of wondering about the possibilities that didn’t.”
“Maybe there is a way, not that we could date or anything. I have a problem with long distance relationships.”
“Same here, they never seem to end correctly do they?”
“More like they never end. But, this place is going to last forever isn’t it?”
“As long as western civilization survives, which may or not be forever, depending on how cynical I feel at the time.”
“Then come over here to this corner and let’s memorizing all the things we can see.” It was just some little edge of poets corner, next to the small stone for old Ben Johnson, with Shakespeare’s gaze looking down upon us, wondering where his body is, and the markers for numerous long lost writers of the greatest stories ever told. “On this spot, on this day, the two of us held each other in our arms and for one moment were together.”
“Without a worry in the world. With no attachments or cares to our previous lives.”
“With no worries about the future, which will take care of itself. Mindful of the past, as we stand in its presence.”
“Knowing, that for as long as this building stands, this memory will be held within its walls, as another secret of the past. And whenever we return, in another life, we will look at this spot and remember with a smile what once was.”
“And all of this is sealed with a kiss.”

We walked for a little while longer when she asked about my gravestone again. I thought, wondering what future generations should know about my noble life. I am still wondering today.