I visited Saint Conval’s Cemetery on a long-awaited trip back to Scotland. The neighbours had promised to look after my brother Stephen’s grave, but the graveyard lay locked and abandoned, littered with condoms, bottles, and broken needles under a bleak Glasgow sky, its uncut grass higher than the tombstones. I left, muttering in my bitterness that God was dead—until a car cut in front, rudely interrupting my despair. Nose pressed against the windshield, I found myself staring at a bumper sticker. “GOD IS ALIVE!” it shouted in Stephen’s cheeky voice while a sudden beam of sunlight parted the clouds.
Finalist, Fall Contest 2023. Contest Readers’ praise included “really good narrative” and “good sensory description.”
Marya Miller, author of Tales of Mist and Magic, is a former magazine editor, copywriter, and storyteller living in Northwestern Ontario because it has mountains. maryamillerwriter.com Facebook: maryamillerwriter