Dear Penelope Prindle

Dear Penelope Prindle,

You are dead. I am not.

Perhaps you’re glad we visited today. Or perhaps you don’t give a whit. Either way, I’m glad that my friend and I visited *you*. We looked down, of course, at our clumsy feet matting the grass in front of your gravestone. “Penelope Prindle,” we said, over and over—an incantation.

I wonder if, from above (because surely, that is where you are) you noticed that my hair is thinning, or cared that my bum is not what it used to be. I care. I care about many things that I imagine won’t matter at all, once I am gone.

I have no idea what you looked like when you were on this Earth, but I imagine you had exceptional posture, like my friend’s defiantly upright handwriting.

Penelope Prindle, what of *this* down here matters? I wish very much you could tell me, leave a friendly, informative comment on my blog.

We would not have fled, had you materialized before us. We lingered, hoping you might. While we waited, we dripped for you a bit of cocoa-and-coffee, down into the moist, dark soil that holds what’s left of you. Cocoa-and-coffee, and a bit of cider. We also left you a seashell that I found in the back of my car. We wanted you to know that we remember you, although of course we don’t remember *you*, not specifically, but that’s no one’s fault.

Penelope Prindle, I have a cat now. Did you have a cat? I imagine that you did. My own folly—creating a life for you that you may not have lived. Perhaps you were allergic to cats, couldn’t stand them, wretched, clawed little beasties. Still, I can’t help but think of you with a cat on your lap, warming you when nothing else would.

Were you lovely? Were you vain? With a name like Penelope Prindle, there had to have been expectations. Unless you were batty from birth, or missing a finger, or a toe.

I am weary, Penelope Prindle, and weariness wears others thin. Did you find that as well, in your time on this earth? “Only the dead don’t make mistakes,” my friend told me, as someone had once told her. I found this reassuring. She said this before we realized we had sat upon her blueberry muffin and crushed it.

I like to think that kindness is not wasted on the dead. I could be wrong. I am wrong about many things. I do know that kindness is not always welcomed by the living. Some of the living peer squintily around kindness, suspecting ulterior motives, even if there is none there.

My friend and I take kindness seriously. We only peer around gravestones, Penelope Prindle. Today, we pried two fallen ones out of the ground to set them upright. Under one, we found beetles, slugs, and a toad, still, but soft and blinking. I squealed. I am not always as brave as I would like to be.

At my urging, my friend (braver than I) picked him up (alive, he was!), kissed him (yes!), then returned him to the riverbank nearby. In doing so, she dropped her great-grandmother’s spectacles into the river. Don’t worry, Penelope Prindle (oh, but you wouldn’t, would you, no need for that now). Luckily, my friend recovered them and placed them delicately back into their case. It is peculiar, what is precious to us on this good earth. Did you find that so, at the time? What mattered to you?

I am lonely and anxious, Penelope Prindle. The living have heard it before, but you are a fresh ear, and I appreciate that. I like graveyards, but I am not in a hurry, not exactly, to meet you in the afterlife, if there is one. I would just like to know what matters, so I may attend to that now, and not waste my time on the things that don’t.

More than a few of the living find my life absurd (a cemetery! another cry for help! another plea for attention! pffft!), but I swear to you, Penelope Prindle, that I am merely looking for meaning. It is all I know how to do in this life. That, and making children and dogs and kittens laugh.

I try to pry up my loneliness and cringe at what I see underneath. I am not bold enough to kiss every toad I find. I am not courageous enough to poke at everything that squirms, Penelope Prindle. Were you brave enough? What was the most marvelous moment of your life? Will you find me when I make my way to your place? Please do. I should love to have some sort of tea, some sort of heavenly elixir with you, someday. Remember me by my seashell, by my worn jeans, by my glasses, by the sweat under my arms. These days, ladies do not glisten; we sweat, how we sweat!

Penelope Prindle, it was a pleasure making your acquaintance today. I hope you like the seashell. I hope it reminds you of something that mattered, down here.

Most sincerely yours,
Jennifer Mattern