“Some people were born just so they could be buried.”

Is that true of me? The thought chilled Sadie to the bone. Was her entire existence worthless? This wasn’t the first time the thought had crossed Sadie’s mind. She often contemplated the point of her existence. She could never come to a conclusion that wasn’t depressing.

The difference this time was that she was thinking this in front of her father’s fresh grave. The wet earthy scent that came with the recent rain was helping Sadie keep grounded as her thoughts began to drift back to the first time she’d heard that line.

That line was something her father had told her once at her brother’s funeral. It had Infuriated her at the time. He had neglected and abused her brother until he had committed suicide and then had the gall to turn around and act like this ending was inevitable.

How could he deny what was right in front of him? It felt like just another way for him to let her know how useless she was and how little he actually cared about them. How little value her and her brother’s lives had.

Why was she sad standing here in front of his grave when those were the types of things he’d say to her? Was she mourning him or the loss of any type of closure their relationship could have possibly had? Sadie doesn’t know.

She doesn’t even know why she’s here in the first place. Is she hoping seeing the grave will provide her with some sort of closure? A definitive end to their already broken beyond repair relationship? Some sort of closure for years of pain? Closure that Sadie so desperately wants. That’s an ache so deep in her chest that she feels may never cease.

The late morning sun shone through the trees dappling the grave with light. She traced the words carved into his headstone with her eyes and scoffed at the irony of them.

It read that he was a loving father and husband. Whoever engraved those words didn’t know him very well. Those words caused the ache deep in her chest to surge, squeezing her heart in a vice like grip.

She wished he had been the loving father the engraving claimed he was. She wished her childhood would have been filled with laughter rather than fear.

Why? The question pops up unbidden to her mind.

What was the point of it all? It all seems so pointless? What could she have possibly done to deserve his anger? She was just a child. She never tried to be bad, but it seemed like that was all she ever was.

“Some people were born just so they could be buried.”

Maybe that applied to her father too. But in a way he had left his mark. A permanent mark on her so maybe being buried wasn’t his only purpose.

A wave of guilt crashed over Sadie. How could she think that? He was dead and she was thinking about how that may have been his only purpose in life. She was thinking just like him.

She felt sick, but also overwhelmingly angry. He’d told her that when she was just a child, he’d done so much that he never seemed to remember and so much that Sadie would never be able to forget.

What was the point? Sadie wasn’t sure which thought she hated more that her suffering had purpose or that it was pointless.

If it had purpose that means she had to go through it to be who she is today. That before she wasn’t “good and kind” like everyone claimed she was now. If it was pointless then it didn’t need to happen. She could have gone through her life happily and still learned the important “lessons” that people say her suffering taught her. Both of those options just served to further accentuate the ache deep in her chest.

It felt like she was going to explode from the pain, but she also felt so weirdly numb. The pain is engulfing her but everything seems muted and slow like being underwater. It was sort of like drowning.

That thought snapped her out of her contemplation. She blinked hard trying to get that thought out of her head before it spiraled.

Water had been used by her father in ways that made it impossible for her to take anything other than a shower. She shook her head trying to banish the thoughts and growing panic. Staying here wasn’t giving Sadie the answers she so desperately wanted. All it was doing was further confusing her.

“Some people were born just so they could be buried.”

Maybe that’s what she needed to do with her father’s memory, put it to rest. She wishes it was that simple. That she could bury her memories of him with him. That could be poetic and in a way her father’s sentiment would be correct. Just not applied to the person he was talking about.

She would never forget her brother. He was so kind and loving. The complete opposite of her father. She just wished that it was possible to bury her father and live with just the memories of her brother. But both made their mark and both are permanent because, try as she might, forgetting wasn’t possible. She would live with it, but maybe now she was free to choose how exactly she lived with it.

It’s not exactly hopeful, but it is the start of something new. A new possibility, she just wished it didn’t start with pain and conflict, but it was better than nothing.

Sadie took one last hard look at the grave, turned on her heel, and walked away. She would never return to this place and that was for the better.