"You look old." I say to her. She frowns and turns away.
"Everyone does. It doesn't matter."
"I'm just surprised. In my mind you are caught in a moment of time, seeing you now is like noticing a tree we were sat by now casts a shade."
"That's the nature of time...time is death." she says. We are sat in a graveyard, a wide space between us where once only clothing separated us. I watch a lone bird flutter between the stones.
"At what point do we begin to die, do you think?"
"On conception. Regardless of the multiplication of cells that follow, all that awaits is the death of those cells." she says, taking out a cigarette.
"Are you depressed?" I ask, leaning over for one. She passes me a cigarette and we go about lighting them before she responds.
"No."
"You seem morbid."
"We're in a graveyard. I always look at all the graves and take away the stones and the turf and the soil and imagine the thousands lying here. One of the few places in a city where the dead outnumber the living."
"How does that make you feel?"
"Like I am one of them." she says, exhaling smoke. "How does it make you feel?"
"Calm. There's a calmness in death, you see? No matter what kind of life you lead there is the comfort that it will end."
"What about the people who don't want to die?" she says.
"They just don't think about it. People who shun it have probably never gone to bed and closed their eyes, wondering if they will wake up or not. We are encouraged to discuss almost any topic in varying circles, yet only the elderly truly consider that they will die. Other people can't imagine a world without them in it." I say. I motion that we should begin to walk and so we walk slowly along the paths, she examines the faded names on each gravestone, I count them.
"How did your boyfriend die?" I ask eventually.
"He went out walking the dog one morning, it had just snowed. They walk around this lake near where we lived, it had frozen over. From what I can gather the dog ran out onto the ice, he followed, they both went in. They spent all afternoon breaking the ice, when they pulled him out he'd frozen himself, all twisted like the branch of a tree." she said.
"You were there?"
"Yes." she says. We have walked to an older part of the cemetery, with marble tombs and statues of angels with faces worn away by acid rain. Whenever I was in a relationship I always imagined one of us dying. La petit mort avant fin, to quote the famous French proverb. Though dying in itself wasn't as interesting as the effect it had on the living.
"What happened next?" I ask.
"I grieved. I talked to people, friends, counsellors. They encouraged catharsis, the idea that the more I talked the less I'd feel." she says, the last few words tumbling out of her mouth as she stares off, remembering. With a blink the memory is gone and we continue to walk. "But it was my pain that I clung onto. It was what I had from him and I didn't want to let go. I became interested...obsessed with him. All the things unsaid, the future we didn't have. That the children I imagined having with him would never exist. His death had killed that. I started talking more to his friends and family, trying to gather as much of him as I could. I went to a bar and brought a man home and made him wear his clothes. I tried to simulate our past through stories and objects, but it wasn't him.
"After a time I got a bill for his phone and had to cancel it. I should have rang them and explained, but I didn't want them to know he was dead, you know? I tried to go on his e-mail. He never told me his password or anything so it took me a while to get it. It was easy in retrospect, a noun followed by the year of his birth, but it took me a while to think. Anyway, I cancelled his phone bill, but whilst I was in the inbox, well...I started to read through his e-mail." she said, looking at me. I give a small shrug.
"The dead have no privacy."
"That's what I thought. But after reading through his mail, well...I sort of wished I didn't. At the time anyway."
"What did you find?"
"What's in anybodies e-mail account? Spam, job applications, newsletters and conversations. It was the conversations I found most interesting as his e-mail went back years. I'd been talking to his friends but now I saw the way he talked to them. Of course, e-mail isn't as popular now as it once was. Luckily he uses the same password for all his social media accounts, so I read through all his messages. I found out a lot more about him that way than anything else, though nothing that surprised me. A few flirtatious messages now and then, a couple of conversations with his friends the morning after the night before. A person. I could see him that way more, that he had a fully rounded life."
"And that lead you to what you do now?" I say. She nods.
"Pretty much. I became intrigued with what we leave behind. I began to read obituary columns, research the dead, look through their things. It brings me pleasure."
"An electric grave robber." I say.
"In a way. It is history. Archaeology. I find dead things and ease out the last bit of life from them. It is the only way they can then truly be dead, if that makes sense. By being known as best as they can with the little that is left of them. That is finality." she says. We have found ourselves at the cemetery gates. "I gather up all the pieces together and make big murals of them."
"Art?"
"I say it's art, but it's more important to me than that."
"What was his password by the way?" I ask. She looks confused for the briefest moment then smiles.
"It was the dog's name. Bogeys87." she says.
"Bogeys?"
"He got it when he was thirteen. Apparently he wanted to call it Boobies but it was considered too risqué I suppose." she says. We stand facing each other, unsure of what to do.
"Well, it was good seeing you again." I say. She takes out another cigarette.
"You too. You know...I wonder sometimes, when I meet people, what they would leave behind." she says.
"I don't have much of what you're talking about."
"Still, there's always something. A ghost in the machine."
"That there is. Until next time." I say, giving her a hug.
"Until then." she says. We go our seperate ways, leaving the gate open.
