The wild distribution of human remains, part 2
[Part 1 is here. Ed. note: this took a bit longer to get to than I imagined it would. Funny how a major death takes the time it takes to unwind, and there’s just no rushing it.]
After the memorial for my dad, which we held, highly informally, at a pizza place in Red Bank, NJ where my dad liked to hang out, it was time to do something a little more formal about the whole death thing. So we visited my grandmother and grandfather in Ocean.
Which is to say, we went to the grave of my dad’s parents, along with my dad’s brother Bill and sister Sally, my half-sister Lisa, and all the spouses and family.
I don’t know that I’d ever seen my Grandma Jo’s grave. I’m named after her, in part; middle name, Josephine. (Not living in the South, I was never called “Kammy Jo,” but it was a near thing.) She died when I was almost three; what I remember of her is her two canes that she walked with, and old lady shoes. I understand that she was a brilliant woman, and was likely instrumental in my reading so early (I burst into literacy not too long after she died). But I don’t really recall her; her face in pictures is unfamiliar, and I can’t call to mind her voice.
My grandfather, Cliff, I do remember well. He stuck around until I was 7, and I can hear his voice now if I think about it. I remember him tending his prize roses, caring for his opulent vegetable garden, pulling endless dandelions. I went pulling dandelions with him once; it may have been the first time I experienced the meditative power of weeding, and being close to the earth. He was absolutely focused and unromantic about it, and I think I probably found it rather boring, but wanted to be near him. I remember a time, too, when I was in the car with him and someone else; someone else had gone into a store and we were waiting in the car. I took the opportunity to sit on his lap for a minute, because I loved sitting on the laps of my dad and my grandfathers. I was getting too big for it of course; I was too big in particular much of the time growing up, because I was just a large child. At 5 or 6 I probably outpaced the average 10-year-old in height and weight, and I remember Grandpa’s arthritic hands, the swollen and gnarled knuckles, and him needing me to get off his lap because he couldn’t bear my weight for long.
When he died, my mother told me while I was in the bathtub, and basically decided for me that I wouldn’t go to the funeral. She remembers asking me whether I wanted to go; I remember her gently deciding that I wouldn’t. There’s an apocryphal family story that I said I wanted to remember Grandpa standing up, but I’m pretty sure my mother was the one who said that to me, and I agreed, because I was tired and sitting in the bathtub and seven, and I didn’t have the time or frame of reference to really make the decision for myself.
So I never saw the grave, but I remember my father, sitting on the edge of my parents’ bed, and me, going to sit down next to him, quietly. He started to cry, his hands resting on his knees, and I remember leaning into him and rubbing his back a little, trying in my small way to comfort. I don’t remember feeling much sadness, but I remember feeling moved by my father’s sadness.
In any case: here we were, now, at the cemetery, in front of my grandparents’ side-by-side grave markers. My grandfather had remarried, but that’s another long story for later. They’re together now, and the suggestion had been raised some time back that we scatter some of my dad’s ashes over his mom’s grave.
The place itself is modest yet stately, with well-kept lawns and full spruces, reminding me of the ones on my grandparents’ property when I was a kid. Their brick place faced a busy road, but they had a tremendous front yard with a bank of blue spruces all bunched together out front, and it kept the house shielded from the street. We look around and notice, laughing, that there are security cameras, which are pointing straight at us while we do what are likely illegal things with human remains.
Which is to say, we scatter a bit of Dad’s ashes over his parents’ graves, and take the time, too, to say hello to the pater and mater familias. There’s bonding and closeness in this, not forced, just surprising to me given the distance and time between us all. My uncle makes an odd remark about my dad having been his mom’s favorite, and we kind of rumble by it and keep going. Death does weird things to people, is my general lesson here, though I’m also quickly getting to know who these folks are, as an adult.
All of that becomes even clearer when we split off to have dinner at a local place my uncle Bill favors, whose name I cannot recall but which bespeaks a certain old-school New Jersey simple-restaurant flavor. The decor is hotel-conference bland, the salads served in polished woven wooden bowls like I remember from the ’70s. The fish is tender and delicious and full of butter and breadcrumbs, and the wine is plentiful. We all drink a bit, gossiping and telling stories and toasting and remembering my dad, and the childhoods of all the siblings. My aunt Patti flirts with Chris and gushes to me about him when he gets up to go to the bathroom. I get the “so is this the one” interrogation, which is much more charming now that I’m 42 and divorced than it was when I was younger and feeling pressured to be married. And yeah, yeah, he is. I mean, to the extent I have a “one,” which in this case is the full extent. Chris does the graceful and appropriate thing of remaining the sober one so he can drive us places and be the supportive manthing. Which is to say: he is amazing, as always.
Dinner is huge and mad and we leave half-floating on crabmeat and tartufo and cabernet, and convene at my cousin Jason’s place, which is the house on the lake where the siblings grew up. There are pictures of my dad and mom swimming in this lake, my mom draped over my dad’s back piggyback-style as they move through the water. What strikes me in so many of those old pictures — the shots from the early 70s, when my parents got together — is how plainly in love they are, how happy my mother is. They both have a look in their eyes that can’t be faked, a look I recognize from my own wedding pictures, in fact, and it’s heartbreaking to know, so profoundly, how that went. My mother has often said to me that she loved my dad, but I never really understood it until I saw those pictures. The camera can lie about a lot of things, but it often reveals the truth of emotion.
There’s some awkwardness at my cousin’s house, speaking of people I hadn’t seen in literally decades. My cousin is big like his dad, bearded, magnanimous, warmer than his father, and his family is beautiful. He welcomes us, but there’s tension because they were meant to meet us for dinner and now they’re all hangry. It’s all very odd, and we only spend maybe half an hour there at the house, checking out the back deck, listening to Sally and Patti talk about their old times on the lake, and committing some of my dad’s ashes to that water, too, for good measure. My aunt Patti gets sentimental — or rather, more than usual — and spreads her hippie warmth in my direction. I’ve been trying to figure out for hours whether she’s for real or not, and after a while I realize that yeah, truly, she is.
It’s all rather beautiful, actually, if strange and sad. I feel the lost possibilities of being close to these folks I last saw when I had only maybe hit the age of reason. I wonder about the future possibilities, and note, with a pang, the way people’s lives go on, with or without you, and the way death can unite even as it reminds you of the rifts.
Part 3, featuring Way More Jersey Boardwalk Action,is here. As always, if you like my writing and would like to help sustain it, please consider donating at my Patreon.
