Row
upon row of white headstones pierce the grass in front of me. The
white crosses gleam in the early July sunlight, and it’s almost
hard to look at them without my eyes watering. I know it’d be
perfectly fine if it looks like I’m crying, but I don’t
feel like it. This is a graveyard, after all, a graveyard just off
the shores of Omaha Beach. It’s important, heavy, and the
weight of where I’m standing in my purple-and-orange sneakers
should give me some form of seriousness. But
I don’t feel it. Not yet, at least. Maybe I will later. I know
I should soon, of course, I know more time in this place has to make
me think about why I can stand here, see the ocean sparkling in the
distance, walk through rows upon rows of white crosses and stars of
David.
Instead,
I weave through plots to reach the aisle and jog up the path to meet
Chloe and Frankie. Chloe has her phone out, taking a panorama of the
scene, and Frankie has her fancy camera pointed at a monument in the
distance. I strike a pose and make my way into the last bit of
Chloe’s panorama. She laughs, but quieter than usually. Oh--
she might understand already, even if I don’t. Then she shows
Frankie and me the photo, and we both laugh with her. Well, maybe she
doesn’t understand. I don’t know. Looking at the photo
Chloe took, me standing on one foot in the corner, hands like a
lopsided starfish, lightens the mood a little.
Chloe
drops her phone back into her backpack and slings it onto her
shoulder. “I’m gonna check out the museum area,”
Frankie says, pointing behind her to a large, semi-enclosed building.
‘You guys want to come?”
I
shrug. “I’m good.” Chloe wants to, though, and she
and Frankie leave me standing here. I watch them walk inside before
walking back toward the rows upon rows of marble headstones. Where
are the names? I get close enough to see that the name is carved into
the bright marble, and I begin to read the inscriptions under my
breath as I pass each cross and star. “Jake Hemsford. Landon
Billingsley, Avery Turner. Isaiah Crollard.” I should be
writing these down. They’d be great names for in stories.
“Henry Martin. Elliott Grempler.”
Wait--
Elliott? An image flashes in my mind of the Elliott I’m friends
with back at home, spiky brown hair and blue eyes, joking and playing
UNO and celebrating birthdays and growing up together. Yesterday was
the first fourth of July that I haven’t been at their family’s
neighborhood barbecue night. I think of soccer games between his team
and my brother’s team, with me on the sidelines in a foldable
lawn chair cheering on both sides. Wii bowling games, and Nerf wars,
and Halloween dinners at that one Mexican restaurant where they give
all us kids balls of uncooked tortilla dough.
Another
image follows after these, another image where my friend is in a
different situation, one where he’s grown up and the blue eyes
are frozen open and the two men carrying him aren’t even sure
whether he’s alive or dead. A sharp breath sticks in my throat
and makes me gasp for air. Now I feel it, now I understand, at least
partially, what the children and the grandchildren and the relatives
and the distant bystander felt and feels and will feel. As much as I
might be able to handle, the weight of these graves hits me. These
crosses, these stars, try to tell the stories of the people that lie
beneath them. They had so much more to miss than tortilla dough on
Halloween, and for their family, their friends-- it was real. It is
real.
The
grass is green and bright, and when I look up, eyes burning, I can
see a man watering the shrubs across the field. Some part of me is
annoyed by this. Why is he trying to keep the shrubs green, why is he
paid to make this place beautiful, this place of death and
destruction and hearts cleaved in two pieces. There is a monument to
the unnamed soldier, a massive pit filled with crumpled bodies, over
past the museum area. I was just there, only a few minutes ago,
laughing and talking with Frankie and Jasmine and Chloe, laughing and
talking without thinking. There are shrubs around that monument also,
shrubs that are nourished and cared for, grass that is mowed and
fertilized and made to look beautiful.
Of
course I realize, somewhere in the corner of my mind, that the
grounds are kept nice out of respect, that the flower baskets filled
with red roses at the foot of the memorials are a commemoration of
the astronomical sacrifice that these people carried the brunt of
until it killed them. Or maybe the sacrifice was the death, the
greatest sacrifice a person can give. Everyone wants to respect that,
to show their admiration and love and thanks.
But
to me, in this moment, it looks like an outrage, a twisted attempt to
hide the horror from innocent tourists who don’t stop and
think. I didn’t stop and think. I know that I truly don’t
want to be disrespectful, but wouldn’t it be better not to lie?
I’ve
been staring blankly at the tombstone with my friend’s first
name on it, that deceptive white cross that shines in the sun, that
seems to glow in its affront of pacificity. Even the cross, the
murder weapon, is made to look serene and clean. Someone washed the
blood off the cross, someone decided to make these headstones a
replica of the instrument of death. They knew what happened here.
They, whoever chose the cross and the Star of David for these
headstones, knew more than the person who decided to make them out of
marble, who decided to clean and polish them until they sparkle.
I
grind my toes into the ground, but I don’t tear up the grass.
Behind me, I hear Chloe talking, sharing a story her older sister
told her once about some silly thing that I can’t even try to
listen to right now. I turn around, but not to see my friends, to see
instead the glittering water beyond the shrubs, off in the distance
where the grass turns into rocks, then sand, then ocean. Omaha Beach.
We’ll be there soon, later today, and I’ll think. I’ll
stand on the beach, with my colorful sneakers on the sand, and
understand why I’m standing there. I’ll understand what
it cost.
Martina
Preston is an undergraduate student in Washington state, where she is
double majoring in English and Communication with a minor in Ancient
Languages. She has a passion for linguistics and connecting with
people through the written and spoken word. Her fiction work has been
published in several online compilations, and she has worked for five
years at a lifestyle and current events magazine. To read some of her
recent works, visit https://www.clippings.me/martinapreston.
