Monday through Thursday, we load up in our white, basic, paid-off Kia and head off to school. Baby girl no longer bursts with excitement to make the trek as she used to in preschool, but she knows she has to go.

In spite of her reluctance to sit for eight hours in a classroom (I don’t blame her), life exudes from her. On the drive, she talks about her future slime shop and owning a mansion and letting me live in a corner of said mansion rent-free. We listen to her self-made playlist, which includes the Pokemon theme song, Rockwell, and a song about the color blue.

Our path to school always includes a congested four-way stop next to a cemetery…a stark contrast to the lives navigating each crawling vehicle.

Over the past five years of driving this same route, the cemetery demonstrates its gluttony. More and more plots appear, subtracting from the open, lush field of green. The grass lies. It appears peaceful and inviting, but it’s just an alluring trap to hide its insidious motive to gobble up more graves to capacity.

Sometimes on my way to pick her up from school, I see an excavator and workers preparing a new site. Other times, I see a snake of cars on the inner cemetery road, with people crowded around to see a hollow body lowered into the earth’s maw. On a random Tuesday, I saw a man sitting in a chair in front of a headstone–just staring. He probably didn’t see it as a random Tuesday.

Ever since they ate that fruit, we keep digging literal and metaphorical graves. We die inside–our joy, kindness, and love dissipate: relinquishing their birthrights to our hearts. They lose the battle and hate, mediocrity, and apathy stake their flags, claiming ownership over us.

One day, death will die forever and cemeteries will fade into obsolescence. Maybe a painting of a cemetery will hang in an eternal museum and eternal humans will find it amusing that such a thing ever existed. He made it possible. We will love and be loved endlessly and without hindrance. Eternal light will emanate.

“Yes, he’ll banish death forever. And God will wipe the tears from every face…” Isaiah 25:8a MSG

“Then the saying will come true: Death swallowed by triumphant Life! Who got the last word, oh, Death? Who’s afraid of you now?” 1 Corinthians 15:54 MSG