Spring Has Arrived At Last!
Time to Visit the Dead!
When I was younger, some of my friends looked forward to the last day of school. The day that said, “You are free! Go! Run and be young!” Some would spend the time in their backyard pools, a few would hang out at the local park all day and night, and the rich kids would head off on exciting vacations.
Other kids waited for that first autumn leaf to fall from the tree. That was the signal for costumes, candies, trick-or-treating, haunted houses, and Halloween parties.
Many anticipated Christmas morning. After setting out the milk and cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve, they would awaken on a cold winter’s morning to open piles of gifts and toys.
I, on the other hand, prepared for a different season. It didn’t happen on a specific day like December 25th or with a specific event like the leaves turning orange. No, it was more subtle than that. I would know it was coming when the air began to smell wet and earthy. I would know when my shoes became caked with mud instead of snow. I would know when little green shoots of daffodils began to poke from the ground.
Spring was just around the corner — and I knew that it was cemetery time.
All of my immediate family is buried at Resurrection Cemetery, a Catholic graveyard located just outside the Chicago city limits. Almost 200,000 souls call this 400-acre spot of greenery their final resting place. In addition to boasting the world’s largest stained glass window at its imposing mausoleum, this is also the favored haunting ground of Resurrection Mary. This famous ghost wanders down Archer Avenue late at night and tries to hitch rides from lonely young men. (Yes, she really exists! I’ve seen and held the iron gate bars that Mary twisted when trying to escape!)
If you were a Polish family living on the South Side of Chicago, you buried your family at Resurrection. After a short service at the funeral home, you’d attend a full Catholic mass at church. Then everyone would pile into their cars and drive past the home of the deceased on their way to Resurrection. You’d risk life and limb by driving through stop signs and red lights, but that orange sticker and your blinking headlights gave you permission to be reckless. Why the rush? The corpse was already long dead and embalmed. As Yizma so bluntly said, “He ain’t getting any deader!”
So you’d pull into the cemetery, follow the procession to the gravesite and watch the adult women try to navigate the soft earth in their spiky heels. Finally, the casket was lowered into the ground.
Now came the best part of the afternoon — the funeral luncheon.
Right across the street from Resurrection was The Landmark, a banquet hall that hosted a family-style luncheon after every funeral. It was decorated in 1970s splendor: lots of plastic greenery and little waterfall grottos that were lit by multi-colored Malibu lights. The ladies room had a lounge area that was the size of a small apartment. There were fancy chairs and fainting couches, and the walls were covered in lights and mirrors.
Once you tore yourself away from the luxury of the bathroom, it was time to eat! The banquet hall would section off tables for your family as they hosted up to 5 post-funeral lunches at a time. Family-style serving meant that huge platters of food were delivered to your table and passed along from person to person. The menu was always the same: baked chicken, roast beef, mostaccioli, green beans, mashed potatoes, sauerkraut, and, best of all, buttered dumplings. When I was young, the funerals I attended were mostly for family members I didn’t know very well, like Great-Aunt Hilda or old Uncle Fred. So when I was told that we would be attending the funeral of another distant relative, I wasn’t overcome with sadness, but instead, a desire to feast on an unlimited supply of salty, buttery dumplings.
Sorry, I’m getting distracted by the food. I came here to tell you about springtime cemetery visits.
So all these dead people at Resurrection needed to be visited. It was polite to go and “see” them on the major holidays like Easter, Christmas, Mother’s or Father’s Day, Thanksgiving, their birthdays, and even the Fourth of July if you were feeling extra festive. But the spring visit was the most important one of the year. That was when you cleaned up the gravesite after a hard Chicago winter.
My mom would pack the car with buckets, sponges, small hand brooms, and assorted gardening tools. On the way, we would make a stop at one of the greenhouses that surround the cemetery. Walking into one of these buildings was like stepping into a Florida sunroom. It was a warm, soothing contrast to the wind and rain and cold of an April day. Your glasses would immediately fog up, but the smell was intoxicating! The hyacinths and lilies were in bloom, and their fragrance would fill your senses. You could smell soil and seeds, along with a weird plastic odor from the fake wreaths. We would buy large flats of geraniums, marigolds, and petunias and hop back into the car.
Finding a specific grave in a cemetery as large as Resurrection was a bit tricky. Each “island” of headstones looked very much the same as the one across the road. We knew that none of our beloved dead had been buried in the rich section where 6-foot monuments were guarded by imposing ceramic angels. Our relatives were laid to rest under modest granite markers. My grandparent’s stones displayed their names, their birth and death dates, and the simple descriptions, “Beloved Wife” and “Dearest Husband”.
After a few incorrect left turns, we’d locate the large statue of St. Francis that guarded hundreds of souls on his own little island. We’d unpack the car, and my job was to fill the buckets with water from the pump located on the corner of each section. By the time I lugged the filled buckets up to the gravesites, my sneakers were sopping wet and caked in cold mud. We would wash and sweep each headstone, pull weeds, and gather up any garbage that had accumulated. Then we’d start planting the flowers. I would wander the area and look at the different names and dates while walking in a weird zig-zag pattern since it was poor manners to walk on top of the grass where the person was actually buried. I’d see headstones that were as shiny and clean as if they were brand new. But I’d see many others that I knew had never been maintained. There were headstones with American flags, ones with elaborate wreaths, and others with shiny, spinning pinwheels, balloons, and stuffed animals. You knew that some of those graves belonged to children, and it was very sobering to 10-year-old me to realize that young people died — just like my old aunts and uncles.
We would do my grandmother first, then head over to Grandpa who was lying about 25 feet away. When both were done, the prayers would start. My mom and I would stand over each headstone and recite a few Hail Marys, an Our Father and the Hail Holy Queen. We had a lot of reverence and solemnity for the first few cleanings, but Grandma and Grandpa were just the starts of a very long afternoon.
My mom and I would get back in the car (avoiding the teen who was getting their first cemetery driving lesson) and head off to our next stop. We visited and cleaned both of my mom’s grandparents, my dad’s parents, about 4 different aunts, and an equal amount of uncles. By the time the last headstone was cleaned and the last geranium was planted, I was an absolute mess. My shoes were sopping wet, my hands were chapped, my nails were caked in mud, and I was freezing! The last set of prayers was mumbled through chattering teeth, while all sense of holiness and piety were completely abandoned. But, oh, there was nothing as comforting as getting back into the warm car to start the drive home.
My mom and I stopped our Springtime visits in the early 1980s. I was getting older and starting to complain about wasting a perfectly good Saturday afternoon. I was forced to go back for the big holidays like Christmas and Easter, but we eventually stopped planting flowers and saying the prayers, and in time we stopped going altogether. But the sense of smell has a long memory. Now, I’ll be at the grocery store walking past the floral section, and hyacinth will make itself known. Or I might be walking the dog on a gray spring afternoon, and the smell of the soil will remind me of Resurrection. When those scents reach into my mind, I sometimes find myself reciting: Hail Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope. And it’s then that I realize that spring has indeed sprung.
