![\"What](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/WhatILearned-web830x120.jpg?resize=830%2C120&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Perhaps he had been asking himself that very same question. While with <\/span>Cujo<\/span><\/i> King gives little Tad Trenton death, in <\/span>Pet Sematary <\/span><\/i>he gives little Gage Creed life\u2026 after death. <\/span><\/p>\n The master of horror giveth. It\u2019s a gruesome scene, arguably one of the most difficult to read in any of King\u2019s novels, as Louis and Rachel Creed\u2019s three year old son wanders out into the road and is hit by an oncoming semi. The prose is ruthless and heartbreaking in its sincerity. <\/span><\/p>\n Gage is not the first victim of the busy road, however. He\u2019s not even the first victim of the household. Earlier in the tale, Louis and Rachel\u2019s five-year-old daughter Ellie loses her beloved cat, Church, to the traffic. <\/span><\/p>\n Louis keeps the pet\u2019s death a secret from Ellie. It\u2019s a secret from Rachel, too. It\u2019s a secret Louis shares only with old Jud, the neighbor from across the street. For it is Jud who has introduced Louis to what lies beyond the “Pet Sematary” in the woods—that Micmac Indian burial ground where what is laid to rest has a nasty habit of clawing its way back from the dead. <\/span><\/p>\n Until that day when Louis watches his three-year-old boy run out into the busy road, and nothing will ever be considered normal again. <\/span><\/p>\n The wheels and cogs of Louis\u2019s grief-stricken mind begin to turn until reaching the irresistible question: What if I buried my son in that old Micmac burial ground?<\/em> Never mind that the whole town knows of Gage\u2019s death, and might suspect something upon seeing him alive. Never mind that the sight of little Gage could send his wife and young daughter straight into a life of therapy sessions. Never mind that his son has already been laid to rest elsewhere, and that means he will have to dig the boy up with shovel and pick. It means he will have to carry his boy\u2019s lifeless body without being noticed, through the woods, up the path, beyond the barrier, and into that forbidden territory. <\/span><\/p>\n Of course, Louis\u2019s neighbor Jud can see the wheels in Louis\u2019s head turning from miles away\u00a0(or from just across the street, as it were). He tells Louis about the few times he\u2019s known men who buried their pets up there, and about the time he himself buried his beloved dog. Jud warns Louis that what comes back has a way of being different from how it once was. It\u2019s changed. More aggressive and downright mean, like Church, the cat. Perhaps it\u2019s because it is soulless. Or evil, even. <\/span><\/p>\n As Jud warns Louis, <\/span>\u201cSometimes dead is better.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n But Louis, desperate for his boy, cannot stop himself. <\/span><\/p>\n And that is, of course, when all hell breaks loose, and the real horror begins. <\/span><\/p>\n *<\/p>\n On the surface, it could easily be said that <\/span>Pet Sematary <\/span><\/i>is like a fable; a story about the dangers of wanting something so badly, we no longer care about the consequences. This is probably true. However, there\u2019s something deeper buried in <\/span>Pet Sematary<\/span><\/i>\u2019s pages. It takes a little digging, and a lot of reading between the lines, but if you\u2019ll grab a shovel and a pick, and indulge me for a moment\u2026 \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Something happens to one who reads Stephen King\u2019s <\/span>Pet Sematary<\/span><\/i>. There comes a time inevitable, though that time may not be the same for each of us. Perhaps it\u2019s on a different chapter, a different page, or maybe it\u2019s after we\u2019ve set the book down for a while and we\u2019re thinking about it alone in the shower, or while making dinner for our own family, feeding the dog, or tucking our little ones snug into bed. <\/span><\/p>\n But the question we ultimately are to arrive at is the same: <\/span>What would I do? <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n Would I <\/span>do<\/span><\/i> such a thing? <\/span><\/p>\n Could<\/span><\/i> I\u2026? <\/span><\/p>\n Bury a beloved pet in that Micmac burial ground? <\/span><\/p>\n Bury even\u2026 a <\/span>person<\/span><\/i> if we were under the emotional strains of such grief? <\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s a question that only merits a few seconds of serious thought before we begin to laugh at it, and ourselves. “No” is the conclusion as inevitable as the question itself. No, of course not, and how silly. Who would do such a thing? <\/span><\/p>\n *<\/p>\n You\u2019d likely never guess the scene in <\/span>Pet Sematary <\/span><\/i>that stood out to me the most. It might seem a throwaway moment, but I knew immediately upon reading it that it contained some sort of secret lesson, a hidden wisdom as ancient perhaps as the Micmac Indians. <\/span><\/p>\n Louis Creed is at the airport, sending his family off to have Thanksgiving with his wife Rachel\u2019s folks. Louis does not get along well with his in-laws. In fact, he doesn\u2019t get along with them at all. He\u2019s had no communication with them in years, ever since the night Rachel\u2019s father, Mr. Goldman, invited Louis into his study and offered him a sizeable check to walk away from his daughter. He muses about this, as he sees them off. <\/span><\/p>\n King writes: <\/span><\/p>\n Louis could have gone to Chicago with his family, although the university schedule would have meant flying back three days earlier than Rachel and the kids. That was not a great hardship. On the other hand, four days with Im-Ho-Tep and his wife the Sphinx would have been. The children had melted his in-laws a good deal, as children often do. Louis suspected that he himself could have completed the rapprochement simply by pretending he had forgotten that evening in Goldman\u2019s study. It wouldn\u2019t even matter that Goldman knew he was pretending. But the fact was (and he at least had the guts to be up front about it with himself) that he did not quite want to make that rapprochement. Ten years was a long time, but it was not quite long enough to take away the slimy taste that had come into his mouth when, in Goldman\u2019s study over glasses of brandy, the old man had opened one side of that idiotic smoking jacket and removed the checkbook residing within. That surprised disgust had been quite its own thing, and the years between then and now had not changed it. He could have come, but he preferred to send his father-in-law his grandchildren, his daughter, and a message. <\/span><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n In short, Louis refuses to let the past be buried. <\/span><\/p>\n Louis isn\u2019t the only one. Rachel, too, cannot let her past rest soundly. She cannot accept what happened to her in her childhood, the trauma of caring for her deformed and disabled sister, and the day she died on her watch. She is so emotionally paralyzed by this moment from her past that she cannot look death or illness in the face, she cannot think about it, she cannot even speak about it without a panic, a shortness of breath, and a mind unraveling. <\/span><\/p>\n From petty quarrels to life\u2019s unbearable traumas, that which we refuse to accept has a way of haunting us. It has a way of coming back. Changed. Darker than before. Darker than it ever truly was, perhaps. Memory is a tricky, subjective thing upon which time can heal or wreak havoc. <\/span><\/p>\n We are so quick to answer “No.”\u00a0<\/span>No, of course I would not, could not ever bury anything in that Godforsaken ground<\/span><\/i>. And yet, how often do we refuse to let the past stay buried?<\/span><\/p>\n Just as a wife who pines for \u201cthe one that got away\u201d cannot give of herself fully to her husband, and just as a boy who cannot bear the pain of his childhood will remain a boy unable to advance into becoming a man, as long as Louis Creed cannot accept the loss of his son, his life will be no life at all but his death. <\/span><\/p>\n When it comes to something as extreme as the loss of a child, this might seem a tough pill to swallow. If you\u2019ve ever watched the show <\/span>The Affair <\/span><\/i>(a show Stephen King has praised often on Twitter<\/a>), you might be reminded of the couple, Alison and Cole, who lost their child at around the same age as Gage. Alison and Cole are unable to talk much about what happened that day. In their inability to accept what has happened, a wall is built between them. They turn frigid and forever remain stuck in their past, as long as they are with each other. <\/span><\/p>\n *<\/p>\n As I write this column in October 2016, I am recently engaged to be married. With that engagement arrived an onslaught of memories from my past; some of them the kind that haunt. All of them beg to be seen for what they are, to be accepted, and to be released. In order for me to become the kind of husband I hope to become, the kind of father I hope to become, the kind of person I hope to become, I will need to let what\u2019s been done be done. Too often, I find I am like Louis Creed. Holding too tightly to a grudge, wanting to send a message. Keeping too close to a memory, no more than a faded photograph. <\/span><\/p>\n To live in the present is a great risk. We hold onto our past, our memories, our scars like security blankets; for despite the heartaches they bear, they are what is safe and what is known. <\/span><\/p>\n Yes, to live in the present is a great risk, but as Stephen King writes in <\/span>Pet Sematary<\/span><\/i>, \u201cThere is no gain without risk, perhaps no risk without love.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n What I Learned from Stephen King\u201d is a Cemetery Dance Online exclusive series of articles about the wisdom, spirituality and life lessons found within the works of Stephen King. Jason Sechrest began his career at 15 years old as a full-time staff writer for <\/i>Femme Fatales magazine. His writing credits include <\/i>LA Weekly,<\/i>Frontiers, <\/i>Entertainment Weekly and more. He tweets as @JasonSechrest<\/a> and posts often onFacebook<\/a>.<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"book\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/book.jpg?resize=238%2C350&ssl=1\")
There is a bit of lore that exists around the origins of Stephen King\u2019s <\/span>Pet Sematary. <\/span><\/i>It was a novel he never intended to publish, the one he felt was \u201ctoo dark\u201d to unleash upon us Constant Readers. That is somewhat difficult to believe, considering it was only two years before <\/span>Pet Sematary<\/span><\/i>\u2019s publication in 1983 that King picked up his typewriter and hit us over the head with <\/span>Cujo<\/span><\/i>, wherein five-year-old Tad Trenton dies by the novel\u2019s final pages. King has said on numerous occasions that he received a lot of flack for that one, to be sure. One of the most popular questions he would get asked at the time is: <\/span>Why, Steve, why? Why did you have to go and kill the kid?<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>The master of horror taketh away.
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>The mater of horror giveth back Gage Creed. <\/span><\/p>\n![\"book2\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/book2.jpg?resize=350%2C184&ssl=1\")
Of course, Ellie suspects something is wrong with Church. The cat may look the same, but it smells rotten. It also has acquired a newfound penchant for murder in its resurrection, carrying in dead rodents and hissing threateningly at its masters. Still, most of Church\u2019s strange behavior goes ignored, and life goes on as normal for the Creeds. <\/span><\/p>\n![\"Sechrest](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/IMG_0294.jpg?resize=350%2C263&ssl=1\")
![\"book3\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/book3.jpg?resize=350%2C221&ssl=1\")
I\u2019d venture to say Alison and Cole\u2019s story is probably the most likely to happen in a circumstance like this, and yet I personally know a couple for whom it did not. I know a couple who, as painful and as heartbreaking as the death of their young son may have been, found the courage—with the help of love, time, and God—to not allow a moment to consume their entire lives. I can\u2019t begin to imagine what kind of strength that must take, and yet I see them and I know that it is possible. Today, they have three beautiful children and have raised a loving family, all of which would have been impossible without an ability to let the past be simply that\u2026 The past. <\/span><\/p>\n