Lost but Not Lonely in The Cemetery
I should have paid more attention
To get to the cemetery, my father and I had to walk four blocks to the bus stop, take one bus, transfer to another bus, and then walk a long distance before finally getting to Mission Cemetery in Santa Clara.
It was a slog, a schlepp, and as a child, not a trip I enjoyed making. So, my father had to resort to bribery to get me to go.
The bribe was a scoop of Cherries Jubilee ice cream in a sugar cone.
If there wasn’t an ice cream shop down the road from the cemetery, I don’t know how he’d have convinced me to go.
My father would clip some roses from our garden, wrap the stems in tin foil, and give them to me to carry.
If those roses made it to the permanent vase in my grandparent’s headstone, it was a miracle.
While he’d pay his respects, I’d dance around the graves or look for weeds masquerading as flowers.
Who cared if they were still pretty?
Then, after a short time — the journey to get there took three times as long as the visitation — we’d be off to get my reward for not being too big of a pain.
When I returned to the cemetery years later, the ice cream shop was gone, and my father was interred…
