The cemetery was big, but I figured I would just sort of end up at his grave, since that’s the way things usually work for me.

I knew the general direction to walk in not because of the funeral, but because I visited the gravesite with my grandpa when I was little. We took flowers to his wife, my grandma, who died in 1976. I didn’t think of it then, but now I think it must be difficult to make peace with knowing where your bones will rest, with visiting what’s left of your love.

A graveyard is the resting place of a lot of people. I knew I might not be able to find the grave, but there is a stone bench in the cemetery that bears my family’s name. I figured if I could just find that bench, that would be enough. My grandpa was so proud of it.

There were about twenty benches in the cemetery, but not one of them was ours. I started to wonder if I’d made all of it up. There wasn’t an office or anything—there was no centralized list of gravesites, no place where I could ask where I could find my grandpa. Not that I would have asked, anyway—some quests are better off without assistance.