Looking Glass Opportunity

A window of opportunity. What is a window of opportunity, if not the possibility of becoming someone we are not. Someone we wish to become, or something we wish to change, anything different really.

Hershel Watts was a person, average by his own estimate, looking for neither fame nor fortune, not that either would be dismissed for cause. He just needed a change. Life had become, the walking exercise tour in the gymnasium on Tuesday mornings, accompanied by swimming aerobics on Fridays and of all things, Interdenominational Mysticism on Sunday afternoons. 

It was an escape from the predictable sermons of the morning service, and a way to express more personal interpretations of divinity, without actually being held accountable, as God works in mysterious ways, or so everyone believes, as it allows for a plausible way out. From where or from what, no one was inclined to say.

Hershel had developed a habit spending the time between the Sunday sermon and mysticism, in the small cemetery adjacent to the church. He found the cemetery quite by accident, as he had been simply experimenting with finding a different route home. Boredom he’d found was taking a toll on his friends, and himself. The spontaneity that once propelled him towards the unknown, had diffused into only thinking about doing, not actually, the doing.

He attributed it at first to old age, the necessity to slow down, your body sermoning you to attention. "Practice for perpetual inevitability," as Abe, his oldest friend had put it. Although Hershel agreed, he did not agree to the extent he was going to become a member of the walking dead, before he was actually dead. It seemed to him, becoming physically sedentary to accommodate perceived expectations, was a redundant life style in his opinion, and that of many life coaches he'd encountered. His mysticism meetings were, "flea thick with them," he'd been heard to say in his attempt to explain an earlier declaration about life, coaches, and mysticism. His friends agreed, but found expressing their opinions of the opulent end of the rainbow, heaven, a far more interesting faction to speculate about, than the Rocky Mountains, Niagara Falls, or quality of life issues.

Hershel was concerned that the idealism behind the Interdenominational Mysticism meeting was confusing the atrophying minds of his companions, and decided to seek help, his own. It was during that period of geriatric confusion that Hershel abandoned his predisposed need for acceptance and camaraderie, for more existential outlook. He found its beginnings in the Mount Olivet Cemetery. 

That day he decided to skip the sermon, as he believed he’d heard it before, perhaps many times, and go his own way, as he thought of it. Sermons didn’t really matter to him, as they were words based on the assumptions of predictability that were of dubious intent, in his opinion. Not wishing to be obviously discontent with the normalcy of his Sunday existence, he slipped out the side door under the suspicious eye of the usher, who was preparing to distribute guilt by way of the collection plate. 

The side door, an unintended escape as his intention was the pretense of the restroom, and then flight. The door, although adorned with the usual assortment of discretionary warnings, held an appeal he had not experienced in years. He decided to brave the predictions of going to hell, aided by a local constabulary employee, he discarded the negative implications, and pushed through the doors to the furry skies above the brick walls that corralled an assortment of stone testaments to lives of a past.

Hershel did not fear cemeteries, as some of his squeamish friends attested to. He rather found its historical significance not only enlightening, but provided a somewhat hopeful proposition, in that in not being forgotten, one must be remembered. 

The expected consternation of the of bells and whistles that failed to accompany his escape, caused him to feel the need to rest. He found himself on a bench that belonged to Abagail Broom, or so he believed as the etchings indicated as much, and Hershel prided himself on being respectful of intent.

The brick walled cemetery appeared to be closed, as the grounds were filled with indicators of a past, that from his marbled position, appeared to retreat several hundred years from the future. Hershel recalled his grandmother’s warning from his childhood, “Make something of yourself. You only got two generations to be remembered, then, poof.” Her explanation as to the meaning of life, stuck with him over the years, and caused him on occasion, to dismiss the inevitable as just that, inevitable.

The bench, although beautiful, angels, and wisteria chiseled onto its marble surface, was cold and uncomfortable. He prepared to tour the ancient world he’d stumbled across, when a voice interrupted his presumptive wanderings. “You ain’t got much to say for an old man.”

Hershel not expecting to be followed into the confines of tomorrows yesterday, had to look around for the purveyor of unsolicited observation. He thinking perhaps he’d been found out by an early arrival for the Inter…Mystic…meeting. 

He found his thoughts shattered by the voice that erupted once again, this time from a young girl who appeared to be visibly invisible. He was frightened at first, but remained calm, by reassuring himself she was probably just a vestige of old age, seeking a means to escape.

“My name is Abby. What’s yours?”

Hershel wasn’t sure if he should answer, or perhaps reconsider his prognosis of divine intervention. He decided to be truthful, another lesson his grandmother insisted upon. “Hershel, Hershel Watts. I live just down the street, and you’ll have to excuse my intrusion, but I just had to…” his words gushing erratically at the young girl.

“No need to explain. You ain’t the first lost soul to find this bench. I find it interesting though, that when I spoke, you didn’t seem to flinch or scream, nothing. You been studying being dead? Lots of people do it, but none gets it right. They seem to have some preconceived notions of what being dead means. You don’t seem to have those notions. Somethin the matter with you? You sick or something?”

Hershel found himself at a loss for words. He wasn’t sure if it was Abagail’s words, or the fact he was looking through her at James Duckworth, who appeared to looking intently at the peanut butter sandwich that had been the cause of his demise, or so it had been rumored.

“What makes you think I’m dying?” Hershel said to Abagail as she pulled a rag doll from beneath the bench, and placed it beside him. “Lucy, My best friend.”

What could he say, not wishing to be rude, Hershel reciprocated, “Good to meet you.” Hershel wasn’t surprised she didn’t answer, although he remembered when younger, quite an attraction to rag dolls. But then you do lose some of your ability to infatuate as you age.

Abagail had not answered his question. Even though he knew he was dying, hell everyone is dying, he couldn’t help but wonder if she being closer to death than he was to life, the other side of life really, that she wouldn’t have some insight into what was just around the corner of the square circle of time.

"I asked whether you was sick, not dying? You can't hear so good either?" He dismissed her words as, those of a person who had little to say, and no one to say them to.

Hershel decided to ask, after all, this was as close to Interdenominational Mysticism as he’d come. Hershel was also, and had always been one who was not afraid of the truth, no matter where it might lead. He contemplated the question he’d always wanted to ask if given the chance. He realized he might never get another chance,  “What’s it like being dead?”

“Well how should I know. I’m just waiting for my mother. She plays the organ, and the noise gives me headaches, so I come out here to talk to the ancients. Which one of these is you? No don’t tell me, let me guess. That one,” she said pointing to the last available place in the far corner next to a lonely apple tree, that had sprouted from a seed deposited by a bird in a past decade.

Hershel looked up from the confines of his cave at the furry sky above. The sun had cleared the brick wall, giving a frosted holiday appearance to his new neighborhood. He could only smile, and remind himself he’d finally have something worth saying at the meeting that afternoon.