Peter

I trudged through the long grass with the sun blazing down on my neck and shoulders. I didn’t know where this path would take me and I was beginning to wonder why I’d gone for a walk in the first place. My burnt skin and blistered feet were not giving me any answers to the endless uncertainties I held.
         Suddenly I came across a wooden bench, set back among drooping trees. Inscribed on a silver plaque in the middle of this bench were the words:
                             IN MEMORY OF
                             PETER HARRIS
                               1939 – 2001
         A LOVING FATHER, HUSBAND AND FRIEND.
As I sat to shelter from the sun, I began to wonder about the life of this man. He was born into the kindling of a war. His first experience of this world was nothing but fighting, tragedy and loss. Was his family’s celebration of the final gunshot ruined because his dad hadn’t returned?
         I looked closely at the dates again, embracing this distraction from my own life and realized that Peter Harris would have been a true hippy. I smiled to myself, betting that he didn’t know he was making history just by larking around.
Tracing the word FATHER with my finger, I thought about his offspring. Did he have a daughter? Did he watch her through her teenage years, struggle with the harshness of life, like me? Did she ever lose her way, like me? Did he help her to find it again?
A rustle from the leaves made me jump, interrupting my endless pondering. In that second of hearing the noise to realizing the cause was just a bird, my imagination had swiftly flown through all possibilities of spirits and ghosts. But for all I knew, Peter Harris could be sitting right next to me, unseen to the living eye. 
Although, he did go unseen, even when he was alive. How could it be that someone so close to my home had lived a long, full life and yet I knew nothing about him? There are no strangers in this world. We all live under the same sky, on the same earth, breathing the same air. Someone was born today, and someone died today. Apart from those facts, will I ever know of their existence? Peter probably had experiences I do now. He loved; I love. But we never had the chance to meet, to share our experiences, to hear each other. And yet by some coincidence, I had chosen this bench to sit on, the bench that remembered him and his life.
At that moment, a couple in their 60s walked past, following their dog and smiling. “Was that you, Peter?” I whispered. “Is that why your bench is here?” I watched them walk off into the distance, finally understanding something about life.
Today I was angry, confused and hurt. But in half a century, I could still be alive. It didn’t matter who I was now, so long as I held the ability to breathe, to see, to hear and to feel, I was still living, and I could change things.
The setting sun threw patches of a beautiful, orange light on my surroundings. The air had cooled from the blistering heat. It was getting late, and I needed to find my way home. I slowly stood up, and then looked back at the bench. “Rest in peace, Peter Harris. Thank you.”