Over the weekend I did something that should have been done around
Memorial Day. I packed a bucket up with garden gloves, a spade, scrub brush,
plastic bags and a gallon of water and headed off to the cemetery to tend to my
husband’s grave marker. If the sod around the stone isn’t edged once a year, it
wouldn’t take long for the entire stone to be covered over with dirt and grass.
Location, location, location---like buying a house, when you pick out a gravesite
location matters. Don’t buy one in a low spot. Of course, we didn’t think of
that when my husband and I picked out our site. It’s in the same row as plots
our friends bought and that pleased our funny bones to be
neighbors when we die. Don is there waiting all by himself. Well, not exactly.
He grew up near the small town where his ashes are interred and he delivered
newspapers to most of the houses, back in the days when newspapers were the kings in the media world. He knew a lot of the people buried in the cemetery. He also trimmed trees and cut the grass in the grave yard for an entire summer
of restitution for a juvenile crime. Hint: Don’t move city-owned picnic tables
into the river. Yup, the guys in our row at the cemetery will have much to talk
about when they reunite.
It was a pleasant day, sunny but not too hot and I got the edging
done without taxing myself. Last year I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep
up the stone’s maintenance but this year I realized my recent strength training
at the gym made the chore not only manageable but almost meditative. I was so in the
zone of what I was doing that when I walked back to the car I was surprised to
see another woman was working less than 50 feet away. I’ll have to go back another
day to affix a Snoopy trinket to the corner of the stone. It was too wet to do
it while I was there. But I don’t know why I keep that tradition going because
by fall some little kid will have peeled the trinket off the stone. I use Crocs
shoe charms and if you hear about an old woman mugging a little kid to get the Snoopy
charm off his shoe it will be me, taking back was as taken from the cemetery.
I picked Saturday to go to the cemetery because there was an
art show going on in the community pavilion in town and I wanted to know if any
of the artists knew of someone who teaches painting. At the sponsoring group’s
table they took my email address and I was told one of their members does hold
classes. (Fingers crossed.) After checking out all the artist’s work I walked
across the street to a hot dog place that overlooks the town’s damn and garden park.
With my lunch packed to go, I went out their back door and ten steps later I
was connected to the nature trail. I found a bench in the shade about a block
away where I could watch the swans and kayakers go by. The trail was busy---bikers
of all descriptions, skateboarders, joggers, dog walkers, fly fishermen, and people pushing wheelchairs. I’d done my share of pushing a wheelchair and
walking the dog on that trail but a bad tick season made me stop doing the
latter and Don’s death, of course, ended the former. It wasn’t a sad day of
memories although earlier when I turned into the cemetery I was swallowing hard the way you do when you think tears might
spill. That brief moment made me wondered if that was the reason why I’d put off
doing my spring chore until mid-summer. But it wasn’t. I just got too busy.
As I sat by the river a slight breeze carried the sweet scents of summer and I glanced
down to the cement pad my bench was sitting on and I got side-tracked watching
a black ant carrying off a shredded pickle longer than he was. It had fallen
off my hot dog. A piece of shredded cheese was near-by. I picked it up and put it down in the path of another
black ant but he just walked over it and before I knew it I was engrossed in
the curious dietary preferences of ants. Pickles and bun bits, yes. Cheese and
onion, no. I thought about giving them a few drops of my Coke but I’m pretty sure that
would have been akin to yelling “THE KEG'S HERE!” in a college frat house. Without
planning it, without consciously commanding myself to relax and live in the
moment, to mediate myself to a place of peace, it happened anyway. I was both in
and of world, a god to ants in the same way some higher power might be putting ‘pickles’
and ‘cheese’ in my path to see how I’ll react. They say the benefits of Mindfulness
(living in the moment) are: It reduces brain clutter, brings better force in
your life, lowers stress, helps you better understand your pain and connects
you with the world around you. I get that. I got that tenfold on Saturday. After
spending over three hours between the cemetery, the art show, lunch and playing mindfulness games with my guru ants, I went
home and took a long, dead-to-the-world nap. ©
“In
today’s rush, we all think too much — seek too much — want too much — and
forget about the joy of just being.” ~Eckhart Tolle
