I stood in front of the mirror trying to adjust my tie. I fiddled with the knot for several minutes but it still seemed a little too big, and just slightly off-center. 

I let out a heavy sigh. Maybe it wasn’t the tie that looked awkward. Maybe it was me. After all, I never would have been able to picture myself as being someone to wear a tie. 

As I looked at my reflection I could to myself from drifting back to the time where the idea of wearing shoes was just as foreign as a tie was now. 

It’s almost impossible to visualize any memory from my childhood and not think about Alice. She accompanied nearly every significant event of my early years. 

Adventurous and quirky. Equally quick with a laugh or a good cry. She used to smack me on the back of the head, jump back with her hands in the air and laugh, “You can’t hit me. I’m a girl.” It always made me so mad. But she never hit very hard and her laugh was always so difficult to ignore. 

She was my best friend and at the time I was not someone that had very many friends. All the little old ladies at church used to tease us. “Look at the little love birds.” “So cute.” “You two will have such adorable children one day.”

But even at the age where all girls had cooties, I knew that Alice and I would never have that kind of relationship. She was my friend, closer than a sister, but our love would never be that kind of love. 

I remember one summer day, when we were both eleven or twelve, Alice came banging on my front door early in the morning - well, early for an eleven-year-old on summer break. 

“Come on!” She said. “I want to show you something.” She cocked her head to the side and added, “Go brush your teeth first.”

I gave her my meanest glare. “I already brushed my teeth.”

“Oh, then it must be your feet that stinks!” She turned and was already running by the time I realized what she had said. I bolted out the door, chasing her cries of “You can’t hit me. I’m a girl!”

We were both winded and clutching our sides by the time we made it to the woods. 

“What did you want to show me?” I panted. 

“It’s in the woods!”

“I don’t want to go in the woods. I don’t have shoes and there are stickers everywhere.”

“Come on,” she said, grabbing my hand. “I found a path.”

I of course followed her lead, stepping carefully through the brush until it cleared into an old, beaten down trail. We followed the trail for what felt like hours. We talked as we went, discussing all the important things in a young life: how quickly summer was going by. Who the dumbest kid in our class was. A rumor we repeated with absolute assurance that daddy long legs were the deadliest of spiders - if only they had teeth big enough to pierce our skin. 

Stolen story; please report.

Eventually, we made it to a huge pile of dirt. It was probably twenty feet long and eight or nine feet tall. Most of the pile was covered in grass and little saplings, but the far end the dirt was fresh and dark like someone had just turned it over with a shovel.

Alice stood by her pile and waved her arm like a salesman showing off a shiny new car. 

“This is it?” I asked. “A pile of dirt?”

“Not just any dirt,” she answered. “It’s death dirt.”

“Death dirt?”

“Yeah. Do you know what’s on the other side of the hill?”

“No,” I said a bit grumpily. 

“It’s the High Hill Cemetary. This is where they dump all their death dirt.”

I stared at her blankly, refusing to drag the information from her bit by bit. She waited an anxious moment for me to ask. Finally, she rolled her eyes and said, “Whenever they have to bury someone they have to first dog the grave. And the casket takes up some of the space so they have extra dirt that won’t fit back in the hole. This is where they dump all the extra dirt. This is the dirt that is removed for death … death dirt.”

Being young and innocent of the realities of death, my eyes went wide with the novelty of death dirt. Alice grabbed my hand and pulled me up the hill. “Come stand on the top.”

I followed, again, and barely had to use my free hand to scramble up the little hill. At the very top, in the very center, grew a dozen or so bright flowers. Everywhere else was green and brown from overgrowth, but there in the center was a little patch of vibrant color. 

“Strange that a few flowers grew in the middle of all these weeds,” I said. 

“They didn’t just grow here. I planted them.”

“You planted flowers in the death dirt?”

“Yeah, everyone brings flowers to the graves. But this is the dirt that was moved to make room for the grave. I don’t know. I just thought it would be nice if someone put some flowers here too.”

I don’t know why that memory always stuck in my mind. Maybe because it was such a perfect expression of the way Alice’s mind worked. Always thoughtful and always a little different from everyone else’s. 

Eventually, Alice and I grew apart, as young friends usually do. We both moved away for college, and while I ended up back home, Alice never did.

We always kept in contact. Phone calls on holidays and birthdays. Occasional letters. And no matter how much time had passed, we always picked back up like we had seen each other just the day before. There was no awkward small talk with Alice, just joy and excitement, and vibrant life. Life as vibrant as those flowers in the death dirt. 

It always amazed me how much life Alice contained, even in the face of all the cruelties the world can throw at you. All the loss and misfortunes life can hurl, never seemed to be able to take that joy from Alice’s spirit. Even when the chemo took her hair, it never took her heart. 

A gentle touch on my shoulder brought my mind back to the present. I turned and looked into the soft eyes of my wife. She reached for my tie and with some form of magical grace shaped it into the form it was meant to be. 

“You look nice.” She said. “Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you? I can call out of work. I know this is a hard anniversary for you.”

I took her hands in mine and gave her a soft kiss on the head. “Thank you. But I want to do this alone.”

She looked down at my bare feet and back up with a sly smile. “Don’t you think shoes would be appropriate at a cemetery?”

I gave her a soft smile in return and said, “I don’t think I’ll go to the cemetery today. I think I’ll go plant some flowers.”