There's an old expression that claims home is where the heart is. I can dig that to an extent. But, I also believe certain places have a, shall we say... resonant effect upon one's soul. I never imagined Beckley would become one of those places for me, but the older I get, the more I think it has.
I visited Summers County with Martha today. Memorial Day is coming up and we hadn't made a trip to see Arnold's grave all fixed up properly, and this was a much better weekend to do that than Memorial Day weekend itself. And, since we're all on baby watch due to the impending arrival of my new niece, there's a good possibility we'll be occupied with that next weekend. So we were in Crews Cemetery for part of the day.
How weird to refer to Arnold's grave. It's been almost ten months now. Martha and I used to spend time on that property before we were "an item" and I never imagined we'd be back there one day as a married couple paying respects to her dad. This time last year, I never imagined the paying respects part was coming so soon.
After we left there, we had some time to ourselves before our next destination, Pasquale's Restaurant in Beckley. (Sub-par service and mediocre food, which has been an unfortunate pattern this weekend.) We spent the time visiting old haunts — specifically, my old house and her old house. Just drive-bys this time. I consider myself very fortunate to have stood in my old backyard last year and I don't want to become a pest and bug the current resident every time I go by the place.
I did, however, have one more destination I wanted to visit: the tree cemetery. Named such because that's what it was. A field, formerly filled with trees, but only populated with their stumps when we discovered it. The stumps looked like graves — hence, tree cemetery. "We" in this case consisted of myself and the aforementioned Becky Robinson, who, since it was another time, was known by another name.
I discovered the tree cemetery is gone, and the field is now a driveway leading to a house. And as I stood there, an SUV started backing out of this driveway. The location is a little off the beaten path and I could have easily been seen as a trespasser, so I acted like I was just out for a leisurely stroll, nothing to see here, move along. The vehicle stopped, window rolled down. And... the person inside said my name. What the?
And Richard B got out of the SUV. After I picked my jaw up off the ground, we shook hands, realized neither of us was fooling the other, and went in for a big manly slap-on-the back bear hug. I've not seen Richard since college, and we worked together at Kroger way back when. I tried to explain to him what I was doing there, he apologized for living on sacred ground. Honestly, though, I can't imagine a better caretaker. We talked a bit more, did the bear hug routine again, and he went on his way while I went on mine.
It was one of those "perfect timing" moments where I needed to be at that exact spot at that exact time for everything to happen as it did. Which, of course, means everything else which happened today had to line up perfectly as well. If I'd been a few minutes earlier or a few minutes later, I never would have run into Richard. I'm glad I did, and I'll note for the record occasional coincidences like this make me believe everything in the universe is unfolding as it should.