FLOYD COUNTY — I don’t like cemeteries. As a child, I refused to walk over their bumpy graves, fully aware that my dead relatives were laying cold and motionless underneath.

I held my breath while going past them, a ritual that my cousin started after he convinced me evil spirits would possess my body if I inhaled. Even in adulthood, my stomach muscles tighten when I enter through the iron gateways, knowing that I’m surrounded by the deceased and all of their unrealized dreams and desires.

But, I overcome this anxiety for one person and travel to Walnut Ridge Cemetery. On June 26, 1993, Jeffersonville High School graduate Chris Falco died in a car accident. He was only 19. Beautiful and daring, Chris was my high school boyfriend. We shared secrets and laughs, and the gift of young love. Brown eyes glaring with mischief, he radiated life to all that knew him.

In time, the graveyard has changed. Others have joined Chris in his final resting place. An 18-year-old girl lays beside him now; white porcelain angels guard her tomb. More World War II vets make this their home, their footplates forming a triangle around his memorial.

Once, I couldn’t find his grave among the steady supply of new stones, a ready reminder of the eternal ticking of the clock and the eventual ending that awaits us all.

As time elapses, so do our memories. I forget things now. I can’t remember his height. How did he curl his lips into that sardonic, wholehearted smile? I only recall flashes of a moment. Wearing his jacket at prom. His golf clubs in the back of his old, golden car. Notes passed in the hallway. Listening to Boys to Men in his basement.

Yet, I still can hear his rich, deep voice, punctuated with a slight Texan drawl. Although we had broken up, he had called me hours before the accident. Stored somewhere in a dilapidated cardboard box, an answering machine tape exists, preserving the last words he ever said to me. The last sound, an umph, mad I wasn’t around to pick up the phone. As his life was ending, I was in Bloomington beginning a new chapter in mine. I didn’t hear the message until it was too late.

Now, 19 years later, I struggle with regret. Of what was. Of what he could have been. That’s the horror of losing someone so young. You never know their potential. He and the others who have left this world too early ended their future, only to remain eternally young in our few scattered memories.

His mother still remembers. She recently placed an assortment of evergreen in two silver vases permanently attached to the granite. The plants have started to brown; reminders that even an evergreen must fade.

During the lunch we had today, Dell told me that she enjoys talking about Chris. People fear bringing him up and upsetting her. But her only fear is, without these conversations, people will forget him. The memories keep him alive in our hearts. It’s a quiet victory over death, if only for a second.

And so, to keep Chris close to his family and friends, I write this column in hopes that others will think of times long past and smile. Maybe, in the world beyond, Chris will pay notice and look at what we have become. He might smile to think I married a high-school basketball player and have three kids, or that his brother, all grown up, sports a rather mature beard. Maybe his deep-throated laughter will echo down those hallowed halls.

We cannot hear him. Only the birds chirp from the trees surrounding me, and cars whoosh past; the drivers unaware of Chris Falco and his momentary existence.

I sit in front of his stone, feeling the prickly grass underneath my feet and notice the ants that climb the gray mountain emblazoned with his name.

I take a breath, and smile, because I know that my cousin was so very wrong. No evil spirits could ever lurk here. Only memories remain.

— Amanda Beam is a Floyd County resident and Jeffersonville native. Contact her by email at hoosiermandyblog@gmail.com or visit her blog at HoosierMandy.com.