There are places that hold your life without asking questions.
Maple Hill Cemetery has always been one of mine.
I didn’t go there this week for nostalgia. I went because I didn’t want to go home.
A Place That Watched Me Grow Up
This cemetery has seen more versions of me than most people have.
The version of me filming school assignments, dragging a camera and a best friend through rows of headstones, pretending we were creating something that mattered.
High school me, directing reenactments for a historical tour—trying to make the dead feel alive for an audience that would forget by dinner.
The one taking photos with an old coworker, chasing good lighting between graves like it was any other backdrop.
Later, it became something softer.
Pokémon Go afternoons.
Evie learning how to steer for the first time—hands gripping the wheel of Dave’s car, eyes locked in, like the world depended on it.
It’s strange, the way a place meant for endings can hold so much of your living.
The Day I Didn’t Want to Go Home
Earlier this week, I was in it.
Not the dramatic kind. Not the kind you can explain easily. Just that heavy, quiet drop where everything feels harder than it should. I didn’t want to sit in my house with it. I didn’t want to pretend I was fine in a space that expects me to function.
So I went somewhere that doesn’t expect anything from me.
I told the girls we were going on a dinosaur hunt.
Evie took it seriously, scanning the ground like fossils might push their way up through the grass if she looked hard enough. She was excited. Curious. Fully in her own world.
I smiled when she looked at me.
And then I let myself fall.
What Peace Looks Like (Even If It’s Morbid)
There’s something about that place that settles my mind in a way I don’t question anymore.
At first, I thought it was just the memories. The layers of my life stacked there like the people beneath the ground. But sitting there this week, I realized it’s more than that.
It’s the certainty.
Everything ends eventually.
Not in a hopeless way. Not in a way that makes me want to disappear. In a way that quiets the noise. The pressure. The constant need to keep going, keep fixing, keep holding everything together.
In that space, nothing needs to be solved.
Things just…are.
And eventually, they aren’t.
There’s a kind of peace in that I don’t try to explain to people who wouldn’t understand.
The Crypt by the Water
My favorite place to stop is by the lake. There’s a crypt that sits there like it belongs to the water more than the land.
It’s quiet in a way that feels intentional.
The surface of the lake barely moves unless the geese decide otherwise, and the kids love that part. They’ll stand there watching them, completely absorbed, laughing at nothing and everything all at once.
It gives me something to anchor to while my mind drifts somewhere else.
My mom wants to be buried near that water.
I get it.
I want that too.
Not because it’s beautiful—though it is. Because it feels still. Like whatever comes after doesn’t need to be chaotic or loud or unfinished.
Just…still.
If It Ever Came to That
If something happened to me anytime soon, and the decision was burial, I’d want it to be there.
Close to the water. Close to the versions of me that already exist in that place. Close enough that my girls could visit someday and feel something familiar, even if they didn’t fully understand why.
And if not that…
I’m okay with being cremated and scattered in Traverse City.
That’s where the first version of me stopped existing anyway.
What Came Out of It
We left like it was any other afternoon.
The girls had their fun. The geese kept moving. The water stayed calm. The world didn’t shift to match what was happening inside my head.
But something always comes out of those moments.
Later that night—early morning, really—I couldn’t sleep. My brain circled back to that same quiet, that same stillness, that same understanding I couldn’t quite put into words while I was sitting there.
So I wrote it instead.
I’m attaching the song below.
Lyrics written by me, plugged into Soniva, and protected under copyright. Please do not copy, reproduce, or distribute without permission. 🎶🖤
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