A psychic once told me that to the dead, we forever remain the age we were when they died.
To my dad, I will always be 30.
To the rest of us, he will always be 54.
Leave a quarter if you were with them when they died.
I lingered in the doorway of my childhood bedroom—now occupied by my father’s hospital bed. I watched his chest rise and fall with each shallow breath. I wondered how much time he had.
Leave a dime if you served together.
Sometimes when we visit my father’s grave, we find coins already placed, shining in a neat row or arranged in a small cluster.
Leave a nickel if you went to bootcamp together.
We wonder who else has been here.
Leave a penny if you visited.
We rummage through wallets and change purses for pennies—one for each of us—and place them in a neat row on top of my father’s headstone.
We leave a penny for my niece, who he adored for three months, and one for my son, who he never knew at all, never even knew to anticipate.
We cradle my son and shield him from the wind as we climb up the hill. My niece walks hand in hand with me and her mother. She places her own penny.
The land stands barren, primed for fresh graves. Grass springs up in the dirt, covering the newest ones. New, shiny marble headstones dot the hillside, the rows getting longer and deeper each time, eventually swallowing my father’s, making it harder to find. At Christmastime, wreaths pop against the snow—green with a red bow—and are removed in the spring, after the snow has melted and made the ground soft and muddy.
My son walks on his own, stumbling through the grass behind his cousin.
They get bigger, taller, looking dramatically different from one visit to the next, passing one early-childhood milestone after another.
Our row of pennies expands along with our families, more pennies as we welcome more children.
My father’s headstone is unchanged.
Janelle Sheetz lives with her husband and son and their two cats in the Pittsburgh area. Most recently, her work has been featured in The Everymom and Literary Mama. Her writing can also be found in Paste, HerStry, Ms. Magazine, and more, and she is a regular contributor to Collider. @LittleJanelle