Conrad Shipwhittle

I met him at a cemetery. This was while I was dating a woman whose ex was dead. She lost him on their honeymoon at a pretty young age. I believe her family name was and to this day still is hyphenated with his, even now that she is married to someone new. Some things stay with you forever I guess. We weren’t really right for each other and it was, truth be told, the wrong time in our lives for each other. But she lent on me and the force of that against my own then listing self held me upright. It lasted for as long as it did, and every third Sunday of each month during that time we’d make the trip to her ex’s grave.

Every time I went I saw Conrad there. He had a mess of brown hair that always appeared to be in the same configuration every time I met him, like a surfer who’s stayed by the sea until the salt cakes his hair into place, never to move again. Otherwise there wasn’t much about him to look at, always the same pair of overalls, beat up no brand shoes and a pair of engaging but somehow distant eyes.

Except for the fact that he looked all of 17 years old, working in a cemetery.

I didn’t get to know him until after the woman and I broke up. In the aftermath I still took her to the grave (she didn’t drive, not since the accident) but she always insisted on catching the bus back. That gave me more time to kill once she’d finished visiting the graves, and I’d linger over the others, quietly leafing my way through concise memories that loved ones had defined lost lives with.

I was considering the life of one Peter McDowlingstock 1925 – 1981: “He loved hard, until his heart couldn’t take it anymore” when I heard a voice from behind:

“Makes you think, doesn’t it.” he said.

“Yeah, almost rude in a way, a headstone really ought to give a SPOILER alert before doing that to you. I’d like to be asked first, not be made to think. Besides, it can ruin the road of life when things point out the potholes like that.”

“To be honest, I wouldn’t know.”

“Yeah? You have no thought one way or another?”

“Not on life itself, I’ve kind of taken a break from it.”

“Hmm… thus you spend your time here with the dead?”

“Sort of. I’m here free of charge. The church that looks after this place gives me a room, food, and an internet connection, so I can frequent the cemetery caretakers chat rooms and get the latest on ground and headstone care. I’m here for free, and I think my form of gratuity comes in paying respect to the dead. I’m here off the back of people who leave loved ones here and are separated from visiting them by life. I’ve stepped out of life and found a place where I fit in their stead.”

“That’s strangely introspective for a teenager.”

“My friend, I’m already 28. I’ve lived life to the fullest. Since day one, my parents told me, I was full tilt, didn’t know how to stop. I’ve run with the bulls, climbed Mt Everest, played medic to guerilla insurgents, learnt seven languages, built homes for the poor, fought with sharks, plus a little more. Even met a woman.”

“Here we go.”

“You might say that. She was the first woman, the first thing, to ever make me stop to take a breath, because in the following instant she’d always steal it away again. I loved her, but my passion, like so many other things, was too full on, too much. There was no balance. In my passion for her I neglected myself. I actually aged in that time terribly. She couldn’t stand to see what she felt I was doing to myself, and said leaving me, while breaking her heart, was eventually for my own good.

“Wow, how do you recover from that?” I interjected.

“I don’t know, I’m still recovering. I’ve taken a holiday from life, and my body, as you can see, is getting back into shape, but the rest of me… I dunno. I feel like I take it easy, I feel like I slow down with these people of the past who have now stopped forever. But I look around me, and the work I do here…”

“This is one of the most well kept spaces of earth I’ve ever seen. It’s almost CGI good.” I continued for him.

“That’s right. I don’t know if I’ve learnt how to slow down enough to get back into life. I don’t know if having my breath taken away again means having it taken away for good.”

“And now here we are, with Peter McDowlingstock.” I finished.

“Yeah.”

I lost track of Conrad after a while. I stopped taking the woman to the grave, and going there just to chat to Conrad seemed an extravagance in a life of pressing matters that required attending. He no longer works there, and he’s no longer to be found on any cemetery caretaker message boards. Rumour on the net had it that he’d gone to take care of a small plot in the Ainu community in Northern Hokkaido. At his cemetery they said they thought he’d gone off to study Archaeology.

I sometimes wonder what his headstone will read.