processing the whole cemetery thing...

The cemetery where my mother, grandmother, and grandfather are buried is not one in which I have spent much time...in fact my association with that cemetery has not involved graves... the association has been, until now... with a summer night... It was a warm summer night and two of my friends and I were all home from college for the summer. There was little to do in our small town and we were doing this thing where we drove around town and when we came to an intersection, one of us would yell a direction in which we would turn... as we came to the fork in the road leading to the cemetery someone yelled RIGHT!!! So, we turned down the road... and as we drove by the cemetery (on both sides of the road) we saw a person flagging us down. We slowed and saw it was a woman covered with mud... we stopped and she approached the car and was obviously distressed... She told us that her car was stuck in the cemetery and she couldn't get it out... I remember thinking oh my gosh, this poor woman, If my car was stuck in a cemetery in the middle of the night I would be freaked out too... she asked if we could help her pull her car out... and I told her that my car had no towing capabilities and that I could drive down the road to the local radio station and call (pre cell phones people!) the police to help her. When I said police, she panicked... and started backing away from the car, saying, no police, please no police and she ran away...as she disappeared into the night I suddenly realized it was not mud covering her clothing, it was blood... What the hell was happening. Had she killed someone, had someone tried to kill her? I had no idea... Not knowing what to do I put the pedal to the metal and drove to the radio station and begged them to call the police. They did and we waited there for a little while before heading back towards the cemetery... we drove back by the cemetery and the police were there... we came to a stop and told the officer that we were the kids who had called. The officer told us they found the woman's car, "right full of blood," but couldn't find the woman. They asked us if we could drive around town to see if we saw her anywhere and if we did to call them...the great ideas of a small town police officer... a car full of young adults completely freaking out about a bloody woman... should spend time searching said small town for a blood covered woman...about whose reason for being covered in blood were unknown... We rode around town, in a much more somber mood than when we had decided to turn down that road... and did not find the woman. The next day I couldn't take it and called the police to inquire about the woman. The officer was kind of dismissive, told me that they found the woman, that she was a frequent flyer so to speak... she had gone to the cemetery to kill herself because she couldn't handle her abusive husband anymore... she started cutting herself and then decided that she couldn't go through it because she had a two year old son and didn't want to leave him... That was pretty traumatizing for me... I remember trying to go to sleep that night and subsequent nights but as soon as I closed my eyes I saw her, backing away from my car, covered with blood and crying... and that story reminds me of other events that happened that same summer... events that I equate with violence and death... earlier that same summer, my first night of working in the papermill that year (my summer job) was with some of the men I had worked with the previous summer and one of the men decided he was leaving the mill mid shift because he wasn't feeling well. Another coworker followed him out to the parking lot because it was very uncharacteristic of the first coworker to just leave like that... and on their way to the parking lot, the first man collapsed... and died... heart attack, just like that... and later that same summer I was working, again at the mill, and one night when I was working, one of my coworkers was killed in one of the paper machines...it was awful... he was young, a newlywed, talking about starting a family... and he reached up into the paper machine, something he had done hundreds of time... but this time something went wrong... So that summer... I really struggled with the concepts of life, death, fairness, and god... the randomness of death with someone suddenly having a heart attack... trying to understand how one woman who tried to kill herself survived while another man who wanted so badly to live and build a life with his bride... was killed... where was the fairness in this? It haunted me all summer and for a long time afterwards...

So THAT has been my association with the cemetery... until now...over the last year, as I have arrived and departed my hometown, I passed by the cemetery knowing that my mother's grave is there. I knew the general area where her grave was... but had not gone there. There are so many steps in the process of losing someone... I knew when mom was sick that she was dying... but it didn't make her death any easier... and while I believe my mother was at peace when she died, that she was not in pain... I see her illness and death as violent...the cancer was violent in how it attacked her body, her life, and all of us who were in her life... after mom died I remember knowing it was real, and things that happened made it more and more real... including seeing her obituary... and for me, the idea of seeing my mom's grave, has in some ways been something that would somehow solidify that she is gone... that sounds silly because it's not like I have been in denial that my mom is gone, definitely not... but seeing a grave of someone, with the date of their birth and the date of their death... brings a permanence to it... it doesn't bring closure...maybe for some it does.. but it didn't for me... I had been avoiding going to the cemetery... but as I left my Dad's house I thought about whether or not this was the trip where I would stop... visiting my mother's grave is something I had thought about, wondering if I would go with dad or if I would go solo... and I knew it was something I needed to do... alone. so, Sunday I decided that I would turn right, down the road to the cemetery, this time in daylight... and if I chickened out there was a quick left hand turn I could make to resume my trip to get out of dodge... I didn't make that left turn... I kept going straight... I knew that mom's grave was somewhere near the fire hydrant... not sure how I knew that, perhaps from remembering where my grandfather's grave had been and maybe from hearing Dad mention it at some point... So I parked in one of the cemetery roads close to the fire hydrant... and got out of my truck...my heart was beating fast and my heart rate was up... and I started to look around... recognizing the last names on the stones... I knew that my mom's stone would stand out, being less weathered than most of the others... and it didn't take long for me to see it... her name.. on a gravestone. I think I stopped breathing... and I stopped... wondering if something inside me needed to go closer or if that was it, if that was enough... but I went closer... read her name, the dates of her life... and that she was my father's wife... I didn't know what I should feel, or what I was feeling... some people apparently find comfort in visiting someone's grave... and I can definitely say seeing her stone was not comforting for me, though perhaps seeing her there, next to her mother meant something... I thought about taking a picture of her grave, just to have it.. and to see if my sister would want to see it... but I couldn't. I guess that in some ways it was something too personal to photograph... I stood there... crying...wondering what I should do... and I decided that I wanted to leave a Small rock on her gravestone. I am not Jewish, but I like the Jewish tradition of leaving stones on grave markers... from what I understand, the purpose of leaving the stones is to signify that someone was there, that the person has not been forgotten... and as a way to honor and protect the person's grave... and I liked that idea... something tangible I could do... in that moment... so I found three tiny stones, one for each grave, my grandfather, my grandmother, and my mom... for the branches of my family tree... and set them on the corners of their stones... Of course, my mother's was the hardest... and I lingered there, close to her stone and touched the letters of her name... Why do people do that? Images of people caressing the engraved names on headstones are pretty common in movies where people die... but why do we do it? Why do we need to feel it on our fingers? Her stone was brighter than those around her... which knowing my mother's personality shouldn't surprise me... but... I want that brightness to somehow continue, and not weather... because I want her to stand out... It began sprinkling while I was at her grave... and my visit was very brief... I don't know yet, if I am glad I went... I guess it crosses off one more thing on the list of things I knew I would do eventually... but... it's such an intense thing... another realization in this process... and it is something that is going to be in my head for a while and will develop more meaning for me after I give it more time... I would like to somehow be able to not associate my mom's death with violence... and I think that's a work in progress...the cemetery is not a violent place... at least during the day, when there are no blood covered women stranded there... And... on a clear day I think the mountain which mom loved so much, is visible from there... perhaps not from her grave, but I'm not sure...My dad has to pass her grave regularly, on his way to the dump... and I wonder how much time he spends there... ahhh... WAY too much thinking for this brain...yuck... time for bed...