Grandma passed on two years ago, my aunt last October and my brother three months ago. Aunty and Grandma are buried right next to each other, but my brother is some ways away.
There's an old married couple I see there often. I noticed them when I first started visiting my grandma. They pull up in their beat-up, white, single-cab Ford, take out their folding chairs from the bed and sit opposite each other, slightly angled towards the headstone.
I'm not sure if they sit in silence or talk softly; they're a little too far to hear. I don't know their names, but the owner of the site says their son passed away some time ago. Sometimes we watch them.
"There's that couple again," my dad says. "Visiting their son."
They sit for hours. I know because sometimes I sit for hours.
Because my aunt is buried next to my grandma, we didn't exactly have to move locations when visiting. But I'm sure they noticed we began to visit another person. They watch us too.
When I went to visit my brother the other day, I noticed them watching me. I was no longer going to the same location I had been for two years. Someone new moved into the cemetery community.
There are other regulars, of course. The father and son who visit the mausoleum. The woman who visits the heart-shaped stone next to the far palm tree. The headstone with the name Fredo, who always has such beautiful decorations, but I never see who puts them there.
None of us ever acknowledge each other. But it occurred to me the other day that we are in our own way a community. We're all neighbors and we all notice when someone new moves in on the block.
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