This is the town.
When I got there, he was using the phone so I took his bike and rode it up the main street of the town. Back in the 1800's, the coal mines supported thousands of people but now the population rests at under 40.
Then:
Now : (The road I biked up)
I was wearing this crazy flowing tank top and hauling ass. The geezers of the town stopped to stare. I kept pedaling until the houses and cabins were gone. Then I saw a gravel road leading to the town cemetery.
It seemed ridiculously small, only 3 nice new graves. Then I noted that the path I had been biking up was washed away by an impromptu creek. A small river literally crossed this path and put it underwater. Beyond, I could see a much more intriguing graveyard in a meadow surrounded by tall spruce and pine.
It was a little scary (I was scared for my outfit, lest I should fall) but I rode the bike right through the water to an old rusted gate. I let myself in.
The sun was shining on me as I walked up an overgrown path through the graves. These graves were antique, circa the 1800's and early 1900's. All the graves were characteristically marked by fences - made of rusted iron or decomposing wood that had once been picketed. The small fences marked exactlly where the coffin was buried and kept anyone from trodding atop the graves. Some of the enclosures were very small. They were for children and babies. I saw three child graves from the same family, fenced in together, the markings on their wooden crosses faded away and bleached by the sun.
I felt that I was meant to be there, this place so secluded. The graveyard where my brother lies is uniform and public, located on a busy intersection. This place was forgotten for so many years, the dead resting peacefully but no longer important to anyone alive. I saw the memorial of 29 miners that had been killed in an explosion in the 1940's. After that, the mines were closed and Nordegg became a ghost town. I did not feel the presence of ghosts or scared, even as the path wove into the darkness of shade and surrounded by the remains of so many who died young and violently. They would know me and why I was here.
Tears slipped down my face and I lost conciousness as I walked, freely expressing my pain and sorrow in a place I knew no one living could see me or judge me. The dead comforted me in a silent embrace of natural beauty, peace and rest punctauted by flowing water and birdsong.
Driven atop the field of graves, I sank beside a statley tree and cried, calling the names of my brothers and recently departed animal companion, knowing I will never see them in this world again. Something took my pain and made it less; it drove me up and towards an out of the way memorial for a father and his wife, evidently an aging couple who prepared for their own deaths before they took place. My eyes opened in surprise as I read the words inscribed on their tomb, and I knew why I had come.
"To live in the hearts of those we love is not to die".
The sun shone on me and I smiled; the tears dried in the cracks of my wistful smile as I made my way back with the words of comfort seared into my mind. The ones I love live in my heart fiercely, and I think they meant for me to know that death is not etarnal; love is.
