Along the dirt road I live on, there’s an old farm house with a small family cemetery right out front. I can’t help but see it as I have to walk past it twice a day.

There are ten or twelve headstones, maybe more if I count the flat ones that I’m pretty sure are mixed in among them. It’s surrounded by old wrought iron and there are vines growing on it that look as ancient as the entire farm.

The house looks occupied. I’ve never seen the people who live there but they keep up the yard and the paint is always fresh on the house and barn out back, so I assume they’re there.

Once I did think I saw one of them as I was staring at the upstairs window one day, as I tend to do. The familiarity of the farmhouse draws my eye every single time so I find myself gazing from door to window to window to window.

I imagine them in my mind’s eye sometimes.

In my imagination the occupants are friendly enough with a couple of kids who could probably use some discipline as all kids do. Especially these days.

And I’m sure we’d all get along just fine but to be perfectly honest, I prefer not to meet and greet people along my walk anyway. I’ve never been a people person at all and the older I get the worse it gets, so I’m glad they stay as invisible to me as I probably am to them.

Especially those kids. I really just don’t like kids. Never have, never will. Not even my own, I joke to my friends.

I didn’t notice it at first, but there’s one headstone in particular that catches my eye every single time now. It’s the one closest to the road, squeezed into the corner. By all appearances it’s the oldest grave because the inscription has long faded and I can’t make too much out of it except for two things: it’s the biggest and most impressive one and it’s neglected while the others obviously aren’t.

Which means it’s being done on purpose. The question is, why?

Every single plot, except for that single, solitary one, look as if they were fresh even though I know for a fact they aren’t because unlike the other one, I can see the names and dates.

Men, women, children, all from the same family.

Some go all the way back to the 19th century but they have been lovingly cared for so they still gleam as if new.

It’s overgrown, ragged with thorn bush and scrub. It’s a forsaken plot that the family has evidently chosen to ignore. They’ve given this one poor soul over to nature for whatever reason known only to them and I’ll probably never know why.

As I said, I don’t know them and doubt I ever will and even if I did happen to meet them along my daily walks, I probably wouldn’t have the nerve to ask about it because of my introverted ways.

Still, every time I pass that way, I look to see if it ever changes and I wonder.

Oh, do I wonder.

Today it really got to me. I tried to put myself in that guy’s (I’m assuming it’s a guy) shoes. How would I feel if my family pulled this sort of stunt after my death? Of course there’s nothing I could do about it because when you’re dead, you’re dead, as far as I’m concerned, but still.

If it were me and if my family did do that, I’d definitely haunt them for eternity. I’d probably walk past their house at least a couple times a day, stop and stare at the door, then each window, hoping to catch their eye and give them the stinkeye, just so they knew I knew.

Yep, that’s what I’d do.

That’s what I WILL do if the miserable excuses for a family I have ever pull that sort of thing on me, I tell ya.

They wouldn’t dare.