Visiting the Cemetery

I was in my husband’s home town a lot this past week so I popped into the cemetery to---to do whatever it is we widows do while visiting a gravesite. I still haven’t figured out why we go. It’s not like Don is there, buried six feet under. Part of his ashes are but his ashes are all over the place: on the shores of Lake Michigan, in the winds over a ghost town he loved, along a nature trail, in our back yard, in a river that runs through town, in a locket, and in a four inch high, boxed urn tucked in a bookcase. I was a regular Johnny Appleseed when it came to spreading his ashes. I had to make myself stop coming up with places where I thought his ghost would like to roam. And I’m still surprised I didn’t find a way to ship some of his ashes out west to the mountains in Colorado, his favorite place on earth. I was on a mission that spring after he died. I told myself it was a mission to please him but I suspect I was just making sure I had places to visit Don that didn’t involve going to a gated community full of dead people. But you've got to admit, Don is now part of the Classic Elements: Earth, Air, Water and Fire and there is something poetic and eternal about that.

The cemetery is a pretty one full of trees and hills and they don’t restrict the height of the stones like so many places do. Don picked out the plot himself, based on the fact that his life-long friend and his wife bought the lots next door. Party time when we all join him there, I guess. That thought tickled Don’s sense of humor. This week, I did not expect to see the stone with our names on it so overgrown! Vegetation covered up half the surface since I’d been there earlier this year. It made me sad, mad and embarrassed that I hadn’t check on it sooner. I didn’t have any tools with me but I pulled out what I could, unearthing a nest of angry ants in the process. I tried but couldn’t ignore the ‘yuck factor’ the ants brought to the experience. Ants will take over the world….or so I’ve heard and now I have proof.

I stopped by my sister-in-laws house while I was out and about and we got on the topic of burial verse cremation. She wants to be buried and I said, “I don’t care what they do so long as they make sure I’m really dead first.” But I am getting cremated and my box of ashes will reside down with Don’s and the ants. Yuck, yuck, yuck! Have I mentioned YUCK! I don’t like ants. She doesn’t want her kids to spend a penny more on her funeral than she spent on her husband’s funeral and I said, “Considering how long ago he died and how much longer you can live you’re going to get buried in a cardboard box! Prices go up.” She laughed as I knew she would. My sister-in-law has been a presence in my life longer than my husband was at this point in time. How strange the math gets after someone dies. I’m now older than my husband was. He’s like one of those butterflies that got trapped in amber for all eternity. My memories of him are fossilized and grow yellow with age, perfectly preserved with no chance of growing in numbers. Maybe that’s why we widows go to cemeteries? We need to polish the amber from time to time, to see where we’ve been to know where we’re going. We give an accounting at the gravestone, ticking off on our fingers our widowhood accomplished. Hey, Don are you listening? Am I doing okay? Are you doing okay? What do you think about the classes I took? As I said these things in my head, I felt like Little Orphan Annie searching for her lost past and future all rolled into one. If only that were possible for widows like it is for orphans searching for their birth parents.

The trees at the cemetery are entering their show-off mode. Some people love the fall color palette---the yellows, browns, oranges and golds---but it’s my least favorite. It signals change and effects my moods in a negative way, says the woman who wouldn’t eat orange foods until I was over forty. Years ago I took a class on Color Psychology where I learned it wasn’t just in my head, there are physiological reactions to colors which explains why they don’t use orange in the psycho wards. Interior designers know this. People who create commercials know this but what does all this color talk have to do with a widow going to a cemetery? Not much. I just got sidetracked thinking about how much easier it is to visit in the spring when the promise of renewal is palatable in the air we breathe, when the crabgrass hasn’t claimed the stones and the ants are still hibernating underground. Out of sight, out of mind.

I didn’t cry while I was at the cemetery but I chocked up as I drove through the gates to go home. I could feel the tears behind my eyes begging to spill out. But I told them, “NO!” I am woman! I am strong and I will forge a new life for myself even if I die trying. ©

Robert Frost and the Prima Donna

I volunteered to work at a fund raiser auction, and two half days this week I helped put together gift baskets full of donated goods which will be auctioned off. (An additional volunteer day will come on Friday to help move items from storage to the silent auction and live auction sites.) This was my second year helping on the basket project but I don’t think there will be a third. I discovered I have a low tolerance for making creative decisions by committee. My fellow volunteers were lovely people but I spent twenty years of my work life designing bouquets and backdrops for weddings, holidays and elegant parties. I have a degree in art and a great sense of scale, balance and color and it drove me crazy that every basket and cellophane bag size and every tissue paper filler and ribbon color decision we made had to be a collaboration. Lest you think I was being an artsy fartsy prima donna, I wasn’t. I wore my go-along-to-get-along persona. I oohed and awed in all the right places, knowing I could have done the work in half the time if left to my own devices or if we’d done the baskets assembly line style like we did last year. More than a few times I had to listen to my mother’s voice in my head saying, “If that’s the worst thing you’ve got to complain about, you’ve got it pretty good.” She was a smart lady.

Ohmygod! Now that I think about it maybe I really was an artsy fartsy prima donna if I had to give myself that Mother Lecture! Ooookay, I'll have to think on that some more but if I was being an in-the-closet artsy fartsy prima donna at least on the outside I was the Queen of Go-Along-to-Get-Along Land where I’ve resided most of my life. No wonder I don’t have many friends. I’m so fake and phony I’m surprised I don’t get arrested for impersonating a human being. Robot Lady says what ever you want to hear if her tactful little hints don't work the first time out.

Changing Topics: When a shirt-tail friend found out I’m taking a class on metaphors, she remarked, “I think it’s great that you’re taking up writing at this late date in your life.” I didn’t know how to response to that so I lamely replied, “Me, too.” I felt like an old dog being petted and praised for learning a ‘new trick’ that I’d actually known how to do all along. Though the ‘Fun with Metaphors’ Olli class is writing related, it’s so much more. This week’s class was a series of quality conversations and my classmates have a rich collection of life experiences to share. Sometimes I feel like a chimney sweep when they get to talking about their world travels. Ya, l’ve been to those tiered rice fields in the Orient---in my head. I’ve seen the Heidelberg Castle in Germany---in an International Geographic Magazine. Africa? Isn’t that the place where the elephants have their own mud spas?  Our class time went by too quickly as we talked about common metaphors like “it takes a village” “America is a melting pot” “life is a box of chocolates" and “life is a journey.” Tons of interesting topics came to the surface as the professor asked questions like, “Is there truth in the metaphor for you? Why or why not.” We ever talked politics which pleased me right down to my toenails that need a manicure soon or my shoes will no longer fit.

We also spent time in class discussing Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken and the professor made a comment about how different our observations were from when she teaches that poem to high school students. She laughed when she told about a student who read the poem in her high school graduation speech. I remember studying The Road Not Taken way back in my teens and now as an adult I don’t see how anyone that young could truly understand what Frost was saying. It’s not a credo for nonconformists as so often the poem is presented. It’s far more ambiguous than that. Who knew…except for the bunch of adults who just took part in a metaphors class? ©

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.