When driving along highways and byways in the United States, I often see makeshift crosses or memorials for those who have died in car accidents on the same route. Flowers and painted signs implore drivers to make an example of the dead and to please watch the road.
But as the bbf and I walked along a steep Atlantic coastal road today, sliding through half-hearted fences to sightsee at the edges of the limestone cliffs demarcating our certain deaths, I wondered where all the dead people were. It would be stupidly easy to fall off a cliff and to give up the ghost on the rocky ledges below. I’m not being morbid or trying to worry my family; I’m just being pragmatic. How could travelers not have fallen from these precipitous places? Especially drunk tourists, or cocky teenagers, or naive children? And I found myself wanting to Google the dead on those cliffs, to create memorials in my mind based upon the obituaries I found on the internet. “Child, 7, dead after tragic fall from Cascais cliff when chasing pigeon.” Or “Tourist bicycle careens off cliff, instantly killing Gerald Shoemaker, age 46, English, drunk.” [Nothing noteworthy turned up in my search.]
Maybe everyone is more cliff-savvy in Europe than they are in the States. But I know about rogue waves, veering cars, sudden gusts of wind, slips of the tennis shoe. Accidents happen, and in America, we’re constantly reminded of those accidents. In Cascais today I found myself being more careful on the cliffs because I didn’t know who had died at their feet, and I had only my fatalistic imagination as a barometer.
An old black and white cat weaved through the limestone rocks – she had probably been exploring the cliff ledges for a decade – and in her leaden stare she said, “You might just be the first.”
Screw you, cat. I’m buying Crocs tomorrow. We’ll see who makes it through the month.
