We Are Watched Over

The spidery arms of the trees wrapped the cemetery like they were protecting the dead in their rough arms. It was perfect weather- for a worm. A constant dribble fell out of the sky and created a misty gray haze that clung and seeped through any raincoat, and soaked anybody's hair regardless whether they had a umbrella. A woman walked slowly and carefully through the trees, looking at each headstone in a frantic search. Her hands grasped every tree, scratching them lightly with every contact. Sweat developed on her pale thin face. I know he's here. Oh please let him be here... 

The dying weeds wrapped around her feet as they sank into the wet earth, as if to try to make her a permanent resident below their stringy strength. But she moved her feet fast enough for such a thought ever to come. She had a mission that she must accomplish.

She at last found the new part of the cemetery, with graves only marked with the day its tenants died and a guess at their first name. The 'headstones' were lined up carefully in rows.

The she slowed down as she contemplated the newly dug and muddy mess. She started walking slower along the headstones, carefully looking at each one. Her hands shook as she searched and searched. What if he wasn't here? At last she found her husband's, and knelt, not caring that her dress, already soaked, was now getting ruined by gravely mud. She gently wiped the tears from the stone's surface. "Hyrum" it said. She whispered the word tenderly under her breath. She brought a rock from a bag that was hanging around her neck, and replaced the rock that was there, with the one she had painstakingly carried with her everywhere. On the top, it looked like the others. But underneath, her fearful 8-year-old son, named after her husband's sake, had tearfully carved his own inscription for his father. As best as his little weak, uneducated, skin and bone hands could muster he wrote, "My father. Gud Huzband. Most brave soljer that has ever exhisted."

She stared at it as Hyrum put his hand on her shoulder, and gently wiped the leaking sorrow from her cheeks.