The sick man

I could not understand why people would go to the cemetery. I know you need to go when you bury a friend or a relative that was dear to you that has died. But I could not understand why you should go there again for them. My parents said you go to celebrate their memory, but I have never seen anybody happy in a cemetery, like there are no happy memories. There are only sad people. Often they are so sad that they are crying.

Sometimes we go there for my grandparents. I have not known them for too long. We have not been good friends, and I do not miss them. I have never felt sad there. Maybe because I am too little now and I do not have friends that have died. But I still do not like to go there, there is not much to do for a child in the cemetery. I do not like looking at people, they seem caught in ugly thoughts and have sad faces. And I am not allowed to play with other children. I asked why but I did not receive an answer. Sometimes, when there is a funeral, there are many people and many flowers. I have never seen a dead person, I wonder if they are like in the movies that I had watched on television when my parents were not at home. But I am not tall enough to see in the coffin. Once I asked my father if he could lift me on his shoulders so that I could look, but he said no, it was not polite to do that. Then he smiled at me but I think that he was upset and I did not ask why. And I have not asked him again since then.
To pass the time, I like to look at the small monuments. Some have pictures of people and poems or stories that I do not understand. I don't know how to read very well yet, but every time I can get more words. However, I still do not understand what the poems mean. Other monuments have small candles but they do not smell nice like the candles we have at home when there are guests. And there are some that have statues of angels. I like the angels, but even they seem to be sad like the people walking among them. For me the good thing about the cemetery is that often after we return home other people come and visit us, and we have cakes.

One day something strange happened near a place where people go to buy candles and flowers for the monuments. People gathered around an old man I had seen before. This time he was different from the past. His hands were shaking, and then his head and entire body started, too. Another man went to him and helped him to sit down. Then he sat down himself and held the old man's head. Soon the old man started to tremble very badly and the other man held him very tightly, almost like he was trying to hurt him. I do not know what happened after that, somebody pulled me from there. Everybody seemed to be angry at me, although I had not done anything bad. Later that day my father told me that old man was very sick. He suffered from a disease that was called epilepsy, and people with this sickness start to tremble very badly when they have a crisis, and this was what had happened earlier. The other man that held him did not mean any harm, he was just taking care that the old man would not hurt his head badly while he was sick.

A few weeks later I saw again the old man in the cemetery, he seemed to be healthy again. My parents were busy arranging some flowers and I sneaked to him and asked him if he was feeling well. He looked at me and after some time he smiled and he said that he was all right and asked if I had seen him when he was sick. He apologized if he had scared me. He said used to come often to the cemetery to visit his wife. He remained alone after she had passed away and sometimes he would become sick while remembering her. Then he told me a child should not know about such things and that I should go back to the people I had come with before they'd get worried.

But on the way home I did think of him. He would have nobody to take care of him if he ever got sick at home, and he could get hurt badly. From that day, I felt very sad whenever I was in a cemetery because there are people like the old man for whom this is a better place than their house.