A cemetery at midnight OR A memorable trip

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Date: (day/ month/ year)A Cemetery at Midnight
As I walked through the woods a constant thought flickered through my mind, “Why did it happen?” It had been months since it happened. Yet dark clouds hang on my memory like dark clouds in mid-winter. I felt obliterated for days, as if I had been robbed of my breath, and for days I hung there in purgatory of despair atoning for my sins, and those of my ancestors. What was my offence? To be privileged in a state where many had little to feed on…
Suddenly, my terrain of thought was interrupted by a hornbill singing on the top of a cypress tree. The singing seemed to stop, and so did my body. My feet muscles tensed, and my heart skipped a beat. A shout tore the evening air, and the calmness that had reigned supreme contrasted with the noise. Then all around grew quiet, as I resumed to tiptoe. All that I had dreaded was playing before my eyes. Was I hallucinating? It couldn’t be, it had been months since I stopped taking drugs. When my father, an ambitious politician running for the state senate was shot everything had changed. I had to grow up quick, and growing up I did. Even though I could not comprehend how all this would affect my perceptions.
The only sound that comforted me and reminded me that I was alive was that of my toes crackling dry leaves, as the woods around me opened to an open space. The cemetery had been built before the world wars and it still stood as the sacred area where men and women who had served their country rested.

Rows and rows of the graves lay before my eyes, and for the first time I felt small. My life grew insignificant and faded in significance to the greatness of the silent many who slept in the eternal slumber. “Here the ideologies of our nation rest!”, read the epitath on one of the tombstones. The darkness about me was increasing as I approached the where our family hero slept.
I laid the flowers with shaking hands, my hands feeling the coarseness of the stone which marked his memory. Trying to comprehend, and the same question haunted me, but I could not think. I had been holding on strongly but I had to cry, and as if on cue my torrents broke loose and I could taste my Pacific in my mouth. The gods below and those above watched over me, and they wondered about my helpless immortality. A flash tore through the sky, and a boomerang thunder followed in the speed of lightning. In the quick flicker I read through the stone, and engraved therein was the date of birth and of the death of the man who I had come to call dad.
Six feet under, he lay immobile like a rock. A rock joined to the rock of ages. In heaven, in paradise. I imagined, he had always been a believer. Then I felt something cold fell on me sending chills down my spinal chord. I stirred as one being woken from a trance. Looking up it was my mother, she had stood there, beside me. She had followed me, to this spot, and had tried to avoid interrupting me. I looked up, her face was pale – woebegone from days and months of crying for us. Father and child had escaped her embrace. I came to my senses, stood up and embraced her. I could feel her heart beating, as she gasped the words, “You were dead, and now you are alive!” Mother and daughter for the first time united at the cemetery at midnight.