They were just bones, bones in a box, but their bones were his bones,
and he stood as close to the bones as he could, as though the proximity
might link him up with them and mitigate the isolation born of losing his
future and reconnect him with all that had gone. For the next hour and a
half, those bones were the things that mattered most. They were all that
mattered, despite the impingement of the neglected cemetery's environment
of decay. Once he was with those bones he could not leave them, couldn't
not talk to them, couldn't but listen to them when they spoke. Between him
and those bones there was a great deal going on, far more than now
transpired between him and those still clad in their flesh.

Author: Philip Roth