EX-COVEIRO REVELA O MOMENTO EM QUE UMA PESSOA NÃO IDENTIFICADA FOI ENTERRADA NA SEPULTURA NÚMERO 1.. 

EX-COVEIRO REVELA O MOMENTO EM QUE UMA PESSOA NÃO IDENTIFICADA FOI ENTERRADA NA SEPULTURA NÚMERO 1..

After more than 40 years as a gravedigger, I can say that I’ve buried a lot of people, but I’ve never left a funeral the way I did at that one .  He was a man without a name, [music] without family and with no one to mourn for him.  Even before the earth covered that coffin, I felt an unease that I couldn’t explain.

  At the time I thought it was just my impression, but the week that followed, after that funeral, changed the way I viewed my work.  And everything got even stranger the day a stranger stopped in front of that tomb and said a single sentence that I could never forget.  My name is Nivaldo Correia Lima, I am 67 years old, and this is my story in a few minutes.

  I had been working at the municipal cemetery in Chapecó for several years when the person in charge called me one morning in 1982 to take care of a different kind of burial.  I went to his office with a colleague, never imagining that that day would be etched in my memory for the rest of my life.

  He explained to us what had happened.  A man had been found dead on the side of the road, near the city, a few days earlier.  No one could say what had happened to the man, whether it was an accident or something else.  The body had no documents, no wallet, no papers.  We didn’t know the exact age, we didn’t know where it came from. All we knew was that he needed to be buried.

He said the body remained in the city morgue for days, waiting for someone to come forward and identify it. But nobody showed up, no relatives, no neighbors, no acquaintances.  The city government then decided that the burial needed to take place.  Like a destitute person, without ceremony, with nothing but the bare necessities.

The person in charge told us in a dry tone that there would be no tombstone with any name, only a registration number engraved on a simple metal plate with the number 100. He asked us to use a grave that was already open.  There were a few days spent in the most secluded section of the cemetery, a corner where few people usually passed through, surrounded by taller trees.

  He spoke quickly, as if dealing with just another task among many others, and went back to the office.  For him, it was just paperwork, another name to be added to a list, another number to be recorded in the cemetery’s book.  For me and my colleague, it was work to carry a burden that no one else would carry. I went to get the tools while we waited for the coffin to arrive.

  I had been doing this job long enough that almost nothing seemed strange to me.  I had already buried rich people, poor people, lonely people, people surrounded by tears and flowers. I always treated everyone the same way, with the same care, whether that person was well-known or not.  In my opinion, every dead person deserved respect.

  The car arrived around mid-morning, carrying the simple coffin made of raw wood, unvarnished and without any embellishment.  Just a quick, makeshift wooden box, the way things are done when there’s no one around to choose anything better.  When I saw that coffin being unloaded from the truck bed, I felt something different pass through me.

  I don’t know how to properly explain what that was. All I know is that I’ve never felt anything like it at any other funeral.  that he had done up to that day.  I kept it to myself without saying anything, thinking it would pass. My colleague and I picked up the coffin by its wooden handles and began to walk slowly down the dirt path that led to the grave.

  The path wasn’t long, it could be done in a few minutes, but that day it seemed longer than usual, as if each step weighed more than it should.  Midway there , a cold wind suddenly swept through , strong enough to shake the leaves from the nearest trees. I found it strange because there hadn’t been any wind at all up to that point.

  The day was still, quiet, without even a breeze to explain it.  It came out of nowhere, shook everything up, and disappeared just as quickly as it appeared.  My colleague paused for a moment, still gripping the coffin handle firmly.  She looked around slowly, with the air of someone who senses someone is watching from afar.

   I stayed quiet, waiting for him to say something, but he just shook his head as if to push away a bad thought and kept walking.  I felt that too, the same sensation of being watched by something I couldn’t see anywhere, but I didn’t say a word.  I thought it was all in my head and the imagination of someone who works too much in a very quiet place.

I preferred to keep walking and let it pass.  So we arrived at the edge of the grave and placed the coffin on the ground beside it , just as we always did before going down.  I stood there for a second, looking at that simple piece of wood, thinking that no one would pray for that man, no one would cry, no one would remember his face after that day was over.

  We passed the ropes under the coffin and began to descend slowly, taking care not to hit the earthen walls of the grave.  It was at that moment that silence fell over that corner of the cemetery.  A different, heavy silence, which seemed to drown out even the sound of our own hands working with the ropes.  We finished lowering the coffin all the way to the bottom and stood there for a moment, saying nothing.

for each other.  My colleague looked at me and I looked at him, but neither of us commented on what we were feeling at that moment.  I grabbed the shovel that was leaning against the pile of dirt and started throwing the first batch of dirt, and he did the same on the other side. Work continued as usual after that.

  Earth falling shovel after shovel.  The grave slowly closing in, until nothing remained but a flat mound of disturbed earth, without flower, without crown, without name.  I packed up the tools with my colleague, and we both left the cemetery in silence that afternoon, each of us taking home that feeling that neither of us dared to talk about aloud.

   I went home thinking about other things, trying to forget what I had felt during that funeral, but that feeling didn’t go away with me as easily as I expected.  The music stayed there , hidden away in a corner of my memory, waiting for something to happen.  And a few days later, without me imagining what was to come, the first strange signs began to appear in that same corner of the cemetery.

  About four days after that burial, I had to go back to the grave to affix the permanent identification plaque.  Up until that point, only the temporary wooden plaque remained, and the person in charge of the cemetery wanted the metal one installed immediately, firmly attached to the headstone, just as was done with all the graves in the place.

  I gathered the necessary tools—hammer, nails, the already-made sign—and walked alone to that most secluded corner of the cemetery.  The day was normal, the sun weakly peeking through the clouds, with nothing immediately catching the eye.  Just another day , like so many others I had experienced at that job over the years.

  Along the way, a dog that lived nearby, roaming freely among the graves, came walking beside me, just as he always did with everyone who passed by him.  That dog was loved by everyone who worked there.  It didn’t have a definite owner, nobody really knew where it had come from, but each employee gave it food, water, and a pat on the head now and then.

  He spent the whole day wandering among the tombstones, lying in the shade, following whoever was working, always calm wherever he went.  As we got closer to the grave, the dog suddenly stopped , stood there, planted in place, without taking another step in my direction.  I found that strange at the time because I had never seen him stop like that before.

  I called his name, clapped lightly, trying to bring him closer, but the dog didn’t move. He stood there, staring intently at the grave, his body stiff, his ears perked up.  I didn’t think much of it at the time and continued on alone to the gravestone with the metal plate under my arm.  I knelt near the headboard and began the task of carefully attaching that number there, tightening the nails well so they wouldn’t come loose later with time and the heavy rain that usually fell in that region.

  I stayed focused on the task, trying to do everything right, the way I always did at every grave.  That’s when the dog started growling, a low, continuous growl, unlike anything I’d ever heard from him before in all those years working with him at the cemetery.  I raised my head to look, and he was still standing in the same place, staring intently at something near me.

  Then came the barking, loud and insistent, as if it had spotted something standing right there near me.  which I couldn’t see at all.  I looked around several times, trying to understand what could be causing the animal to act that way, but there was no one nearby, no strange noises, no movement.

  Even without being able to see anything, I felt a bad sensation take over me at that moment, as if a strange weight suddenly passed through my body, starting in my chest and going down my arms.  I stood there for a second, unsure whether to continue working or drop everything and leave.  I decided to finish attaching the sign as quickly as I could, without lingering longer than necessary in that spot.

I put the tools back in the bag and walked away quickly, without looking back much, my heart still a little heavy because of that whole scene.  Only after the dog was several meters away from the gravestone did it stop barking and approach again, calm, as if nothing had happened seconds before.   She went back to walking beside me normally, wagging her tail, as if nothing had happened.

  A few days later, I decided to casually mention it to a colleague I’d worked with for many years, someone I trusted and knew wouldn’t laugh at me.  [music] I recounted all the details and said that I had found the dog’s behavior near that new grave strange.  To my surprise, he became serious when he heard and said that he too had had a strange experience two days earlier, right in that same area of ​​the cemetery.

  He said he was finishing pruning the trees around 6 pm when he suddenly felt a severe headache, for no apparent reason.  He stopped working to catch his breath, trying to ease the pain that had come on so suddenly and taken over his entire head .  It was at that moment, while still trying to compose himself, that he spotted a man walking slowly among the tombstones, not far from where he had been working at that time.

  The pain became so intense that he had to close his eyes for a few seconds, trying to endure it without collapsing to the ground.  When he opened his eyes again, the man was no longer anywhere to be found.  It had vanished just as suddenly as it had appeared, without leaving a trace, without the sound of footsteps, without any sign of having been there.

  My colleague felt a strong chill and a bad feeling take over him at that moment, still a little dizzy, with a headache that just wouldn’t go away.  He told me that he could only think of one thing at that moment: to get out of there as quickly as possible.  He carelessly dropped his pruning tools against  a nearby tree and walked away quickly, unable to properly explain what he had just witnessed among those tombstones.

  He only returned to get the tools the following morning, when the sun was already high in the sky.  I was shaken when I heard his story, feeling that I wasn’t the only one going through that alone during those days.  I remained silent for a moment, piecing together in my head what had happened between me and the dog and what he had just told me about the man who had vanished right before his eyes.

   I began to suspect that something was really happening in that cemetery, especially in that corner where tomb 1001 was located. And no matter how hard I tried to find a logical explanation for it all, a certainty gradually grew within me.  It had only started after the burial of the nameless man.

  Days went by after that conversation with my colleague, and the strange things kept happening.  They weren’t always big events, but they were frequent enough that I couldn’t forget that place for very long.  About a week after the funeral, late in the afternoon, I was returning to the staff room to get ready and go home.

  The sun was already low and the place was beginning to empty out little by little, just as it always did at that time of day.  I followed my usual path, passing close to the rows of older graves, thinking about the dinner my wife must be preparing at home at that moment.  My mind was more occupied with the exhaustion from the workday than anything else.

Heavy feet, the desire to get home quickly and rest.  It was then that I spotted a figure standing in the distance right in front of tomb 1001, a lady with her head down, standing alone in that most secluded corner of the cemetery, where almost no one usually passed by at that time of day, especially near the end of the afternoon, when the activity had already decreased considerably.

  I stopped walking for a moment, staring intently to confirm what I was seeing in the distance.  That was strange, because never in all those days, since the burial, had I seen anyone stop near that grave.  That tomb had no headstone with a name on it, only a cold metal number.  I stood there, unsure whether I should approach or if it was better to continue on my way and leave that lady in peace with whatever she was doing there.

  After a few seconds, hesitating there in the middle of the path, I decided to walk towards her. My steps were slow and careful, trying not to seem like I was intruding on someone’s private moment, someone who might be suffering there for some reason I didn’t yet fully understand.  As I slowly approached, I began to hear a faint sound coming from that direction, a restrained cry, almost weak, the kind a person tries to hold back inside to prevent it from coming out too loudly.

The crying seemed to come from a very deep place, muffled by her own hands covering her face.  My pace slowed even more after hearing that sound, feeling that perhaps I was indeed getting close to something I shouldn’t interrupt anyway.  It was at that moment that I felt a different weight in the air around that place.

  Something seemed to be swirling around among the tombstones closest to grave 1001. It wasn’t the same shiver as before, nor the same bad feeling I’d had with the dog days before, nor the strange wind that had blown by on the day of the funeral.  It was something else, heavier, more present, as if something were there with us at that moment.

  Even though I was bothered by it, I continued approaching slowly, without stopping this time.  My feet trod carefully on the packed earth, trying not to make too much noise, while my eyes remained fixed on that lady standing with her back to me, still with her head down, her shoulders trembling slightly with suppressed sobs.  When I got close enough to speak without shouting, I took a deep breath before opening my mouth.

   I did n’t want to scare her, nor did I want to seem too intrusive in the pain of someone I didn’t even know well.  I spoke softly, in the calmest voice I could muster at that moment, asking if everything was alright for her to be there alone.  She took a few seconds to respond, without turning around immediately.

  I stood there waiting, feeling that weight still hanging in the air around us, as if it were waiting for something to happen to me at that very moment.   That’s when she slowly turned towards me , her hands still near her face, wiping away the tears that were streaming down her face.  When she finally turned her face towards me, I saw her eyes were wet, red from crying so much there alone.

  She was an elderly lady, her hair already quite gray, tied in a simple bun, her face marked by deep wrinkles that told a lifetime of work. She looked at me silently for a moment , as if deciding whether or not to say anything.  Then she opened her mouth, and her voice came out choked, trembling between the words, almost without the strength to complete the entire sentence.

He said, looking intently at me, a phrase I never expected to hear that afternoon: “That soul needs help.”  I stood there, completely speechless , not quite understanding what she was trying to say with all that. My first thought was that perhaps she was talking about someone from her own family, some relative buried nearby in a neighboring grave.

  But something about the way she looked at me, fixedly, with that urgency in her gaze, and the fact that she was standing right in front of that nameless tomb, left me with a different kind of chill inside my chest.  I remained silent for a few seconds, trying to organize in my head what she had just said, putting it together with everything I had experienced in those last few days since the funeral.

  I couldn’t hold back the question that came to mind, so I carefully asked her what she meant by that, which soul she was talking about, after all.  She took a deep breath, looking again at that simple gravestone with the number 1000 and one engraved on the metal plate.  And she began, standing right there in front of me, to tell me a story I never imagined I would hear on that ordinary afternoon in that forgotten corner of the cemetery, where I had helped bury a nameless man.

  I stood there in front of her, waiting for the words that would follow, without imagining the magnitude of what I was about to hear that afternoon.  She wiped her face with the back of her hand, took another deep breath, looked at the floor for a moment, and began to speak slowly, as if organizing within herself a story she had kept to herself for a long time without telling anyone.

  She said she had always been a woman of faith who believed in the spiritual world since childhood, taught by her parents to respect things that we don’t always fully understand in this life.  He said that calmly, as if he needed to make it clear from the start that he wasn’t there because of something he invented or out of a weak mind, but because of something he truly felt.

  She said that for the past few days she had been having a recurring dream every night, always similar, always unsettling, preventing her from getting proper rest.  She said she had lost count of how many times she had woken up in the middle of the night, her heart racing, unable to fall back asleep afterwards.

  In the dream, she saw a man walking alone through the middle of a cemetery , aimlessly, passing between the rows of tombs as if searching for something he couldn’t quite remember what it was.  A man she couldn’t recognize, his face always blurred as if surrounded by a thin mist.  He seemed lost, looking around, searching for something he could never find anywhere in that place.

  At certain points in the dream, the man seemed to open his mouth to ask for help, but no words came out of him, only the gesture, his arms half- raised, as if pleading without being able to form the right words.  She would always wake up agitated after those dreams, sweating profusely, without quite understanding what it could mean for her.

  Not because that image kept returning every night in the same way, with almost no variation, always in that same cemetery, always with that same man lost among the tombstones, thinking that perhaps that dream was connected to her own son, who was also buried there in that same cemetery.   A few years ago, she decided to go to her son’s grave that day to pray and ask that his soul rest in peace, in case he was the one appearing in her dreams in that way.

  He went to his son’s grave, knelt in front of it with the candle he had brought from home already in his hand, and began to pray in the way he always did when he went to visit that tomb.  She closed her eyes, clasped her hands, and silently prayed that her son would rest in peace, that whatever was bothering him would go away .

  While praying, with her eyes closed, she suddenly felt a strange sensation calling her to another place, a little further away, to a corner of the cemetery where she had never been before in all those years visiting her son.   He could n’t quite explain what that feeling was.  She only knew that she needed to follow it without understanding why, almost as if her feet were moving on their own, pulled by something she couldn’t control.

  She stood up slowly, still a little dizzy, and began walking towards that more secluded corner, guided by something that seemed to be pulling her there. When she got closer and saw the nameless tombstone 1001 , with only that cold number engraved on the metal plaque, she felt the same distress from the dream take hold of her again, strong, just as she felt when she woke up startled in the middle of the night, her chest tight, her breath somewhat short.

   It was then, standing there in front of that simple gravestone, that she understood that it was n’t her son who appeared in her dreams every night.  It was that man, the nameless man, buried there alone, with no one to remember him, no one to pray for him, no one even to miss him in any corner of the world.

  She told me all of this with tears in her eyes again, her voice trembling, as if she were reliving that moment of understanding right there in front of me, with the same force as when it had actually happened minutes before, just before I arrived and found her standing there. I listened in silence the whole time, not quite knowing what to say when faced with such a long story, told by someone I didn’t even know until that moment.

  My chest tightened as I pieced together each of her words with everything I had experienced in those last few days since the funeral.  She then lowered her gaze to the bag she was carrying on her arm and took out the small candle she had brought from home that afternoon, still unused, carefully kept inside a cloth.

He said that the candle was to be left on his son’s grave, just as he always did when he went to visit, but that now he was going to leave it lit there at grave number 1001 for the same intention.  He said that the flame was to help that man’s soul find the path he seemed to be searching for in every dream, the rest he deserved after so many years forgotten, with no one to remember him, nor to call him by the name that no one ever truly knew.

  She lit the candle right there with a lighter she took from her coat pocket, shielding the flame with her hand while the weak wind of that late afternoon tried to extinguish it.  She carefully placed it near the metal plate, adjusting it so it wouldn’t fall, and stood there , watching that small light tremble slowly, silently for a long time.

  Then she turned to me again and made a request, her voice still choked with emotion, but firmer than before, as if that had already brought her some relief.  She asked me to leave a lit candle at that grave whenever I could, for the same reason she had done at that moment, so that that soul would never again be alone there.

  I promised her, without a second thought , that I would do it.  I said that I would take care of that grave with the same respect I gave to any other in the cemetery, and that I would light the candle whenever possible from then on, for as long as necessary, without fail on my part.  She smiled slightly, a tired smile, but one of genuine relief, and thanked me for stopping to listen to her that afternoon, without rushing, without finding the situation strange, in a way that other people might have found strange.

  He said goodbye with a simple wave and continued walking slowly through the cemetery towards the exit.  I stood alone before grave number 1001 after she disappeared from sight among the trees, staring at that small, flickering flame near the metal plaque, faintly illuminating that cold number, which was all that remained of that man.

  I understood at that moment that it had never been a haunting at all.  She was just a lost soul, needing someone to remember her, even if it was just a number on a cold tombstone, with no name engraved on it. After that day, I told the other cemetery employees everything that had happened, without hiding any detail of what I had experienced on that strange afternoon.

  And from then on, that tomb number 1001 had a candle lit every day, without exception, tended to by me or some other colleague who also came to respect that story after listening to everything I had told them calmly, without any hurry. Nothing strange ever happened in that part of the cemetery again after that day.  Neither did the dog growl there again, nor did anyone else have a headache or see any shadowy figures among the tombstones in that corner.

  And I, after so many years working among the dead, believe with absolute certainty that that man’s soul finally found the path and the peace it so desperately sought.  And if you’ve ever felt something similar in your life— a sign, a strange feeling, a dream that seemed more real than it should have—leave an “I believe” in the comments to show that you also believe there are things in this world that we’ll never be able to explain.

  May God bless you and your family always.  Until the next report.