Meridian Memorial

I was a happenstance pallbearer today, just north of the Wilsonville exit, number 137. It was your makeshift meridian memorial, a faltering attempt at remembrance. The Sunday afternoon traffic was sprinting by at 73 mph, caught guilty and unaware by the altar of your loved one's sorrow. Even amidst the mundane roars of the K-mart semis, I can hear tiny gasps of embarrassed guilt escape latte drinking Abercrombie Oregonians as they rush by. They stare in morbid fascination at trite trinkets of love, piled high on the muddy spot of grass where your soul was recently severed from your body.

Your mom sobbed that it was less than a day ago, you were singing Dixie Chicks at the top of your lungs. The warm night of a premature spring caused your heart to beat a little faster and your cheeks to tinge with the flirtatious red of laughter. But now the pavement is still warm with the same blood that filled your cheeks, the bumper strips still echo with the horns and groans of your sudden translation. Your life time of American-made bliss, prefabricated for you just a little farther, a little faster down the deeply worn ruts of I-5, all aborted before takeoff. You never thought one more shot of tequila would hurt anything...

And the growing silence of your death drapes your mourners in modern garbs of sorrow: short-sleeved dress shirts with hastily bought Mervyn’s tie. They stand awkwardly in these modern togas, shuffling a funeral dirge beside your little memorial. The high-pitched murmuring of traffic made conversation hard. No one would really have known what to say if conversation was possible. Instead, they intently studied the pathetic representations of your life, looking for one answer to a thousand questions: little heart shaped balloons from your boyfriend, filled with the cold air of his silent sobs; a big teddy bear, whose brown, eyes whisper the thousand 'I love you's' your dad wished he had said but never did; your senior picture in a pewter frame that only seemed to taunt your friends with memories, memories that will now and always seem more like dreams and imaginations rather than something that really happened.

They don't want to forget you for what you were, but it's inevitable. They'll paint amateur pictures in their mind, romanticized idealizations of what you represented. Its how they'll cope with the slicing anger and burning rage at the injustice of your foreshortened life. Because it's not fair and you were cheated. But they tell each other that they’ll never forget you and already they've constructed an eternal shrine in their mind, complete with balloons and teddy bears.

I'll carry your coffin with me.