Out of Touch, Out of Time - Chapter Twenty-Two

July 9, 2008

For all the beautiful days since he’d arrived in this time, it seemed the weather had decided to commemorate the trip to the cemetery in an appropriate fashion. The skies were dark and cloudy and a cold rain was drizzling down making everything gloomy and bleak.

Jonas remembered exactly where his wife and son were buried and headed toward them without hesitation, despite the growth of the cemetery since. When his wife and son had been laid to rest, the cemetery was new and there’d been only a handful of graves.

If he thought the attic had marked the passage of time, it couldn’t compare to this. All that had been important to him, had shaped his life for more than ten years, was decaying from time and neglect. Without him or his family to keep the flowers planted, it had become overgrown grass and weeds. The two graves sat side by side; the space that had been set aside for him to lie next to his wife was occupied by a stranger that according to the headstone had died thirty years after his wife. When he didn’t return, they must have given up hope that he would need the grave next to his young wife.

He knelt between the two graves and set his flowers on the overgrown grass, the colors bright against the backdrop of bleak decay.

He started to pull the weeds from this son’s grave. Looking at the clump of grass in his hand, he realized how futile it was. For the first time the question he’d been playing with and then avoiding screamed to the forefront, demanding a decision be made once and for all.

Did he want to return to the past, his home, his family, a time when these graves were new, the headstones intact and readable? Did he want to be laid to rest next to his wife and son, to spend eternity with them? Or, did he want to start fresh in this new time with the woman he loved even more fervently than he had his wife? The thought should have felt a betrayal to the woman who had given everything for him, but it didn’t; and that alone answered his question.

He could not push it behind him; he could not just ignore it. Now was the time he must face it. Looking at the graves his answer was clear, no doubts, no second thoughts, not anymore.

He lay a hand on each headstone and said a final goodbye to those he’d loved, and the world he’d known and grown up in. He no longer belonged to that time. This was his home now, and he wanted to stay here, he finally felt he truly belonged. There was much he didn’t know, but he’d learn. With Cheyenne to teach him, he would fit in in no time. Granted, it was going to take a very long time to learn even a small portion of the slang, but he was willing to try.

He turned toward Cheyenne standing a few feet behind him, giving him the room he needed. He smiled and took both her hands in his. “Come, let’s go see your mother.”

Her mother’s grave was in the newer, cared for area of the cemetery. These graves had all been dug within the last twenty years or so and still had family members visiting and caring for them. Her mother’s was not as well tended as some of the others, and as she set her flower on the recently mowed, almost carpet-like grass, she realized perhaps she should come more often and clean it up a bit.

Suddenly she had a vivid picture of her mother lecturing her on wasting her time on things past and done with, and chuckled.

“Cheyenne?” Jonas’ voice broke the silence. Apparently her laughing had confused him.

“I was just thinking I should take more time and keep this area clean, when I could suddenly see my mom’s face plain as day looking at me like I was crazy. She would’ve never spent, or expected me to spend, time cleaning up graves in a cemetery, unless it was the job she or dad happened to have at the time. She would have told me there was too much life left to live and enjoy, and the past was past.”

“I would have liked your mother.”

“Yes, you would have, and she would have loved you.”

“Because I traveled through time?”

“No, because you broke through all boundaries to come to me. Even boundaries that are supposed to be eternally unbreakable.”

“I was just realizing that. For the first time I finally understand that I belong here. I did the impossible to be where I belong. By some cosmic mistake, I was born too early.”

“But you loved, and had a son in that time, how could your being there have been wrong?”

“But, unfortunately, they didn’t survive. When time eventually corrected itself, I had nothing left to tie me to the wrong time. My parents and sisters, yes, but they would’ve had no problem moving on without me. But a wife and son, I couldn’t have left them behind. If they hadn’t died and the distortion does reappear, I would be forced to step into it, and return to them. Now I have no such restrictions; I’m free to stay.”

“And do you still want to stay? I know you were uncomfortable around Mark.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Three