Garden of Peace...or Not

On a recent visit to Michigan, we went to see my father's grave. At the time of the funeral we had picked out some landmarks so we would be able to easily find it again, which in retrospect was somewhat foolish, because you can NEVER find anything easily in a cemetery. The roads meander here and there, intersecting occasionally, raising your hopes that NOW you are on the right road, but not leading directly to anything.


You can, without even trying, easily spend a few days driving around in a cemetery. This allows plenty of time for peaceful contemplation ("Sure, sure, Garden of Hope -- Garden of FALSE Hope, it should say...Where's the Garden of Straight Roads?"). By the time you find the exit, you have paid your respects to pretty much each person buried there, except the one you actually came to see. You have also forgotten who that was. ("Who's buried here again?...Grandma? Aunt Dorothy? Butch the Dog?...").


We were particularly hampered in our efforts to locate my father's grave, as there is no headstone yet. But armed with several clues from our memories -- it was under a crooked tree and lined up with the mausoleum -- we eventually located a bare mound with a lone orange flag sticking out of it.


"That's it," my mother said.


"Are you sure?" I said. I didn't remember there being a tree. And there was no grass covering it at all, even though it was more than a month after the burial.


"Of course I'm sure," she sniffed.


We stared at the dirt patch. "Well, it's low maintenance," we said comfortingly to each other. My dad had been very particular about the way he cut his grass. Maybe it was just as well there wasn't any.


"And he's got nice shade," the Hero said, pointing to the tree.  


I peered at the limp flag. "John Deere," it announced.


"Sorry, Dad," I said. "We could at least have given you a U.S. flag."


We were discussing this experience with friends sometime later. I mentioned that my grandparents were buried in a cemetery in Detroit, now in a very bad neighborhood, and we hadn't gone there for years.


"See, don't do that to me," the wife said to the husband, with some depth of feeling. "I don't want to be somewhere no one's going to visit me." Clearly this conversation had come up before.


She explained that "he hasn't said yet where he's going to put me." All their family was in another state, and she wanted to know where she would end up someday.


"I just think it's helpful to decide these things ahead of time," she said. "When I die the cemetery people are going to take out this big map and show him all the plots they have available. How's he going to decide where to put me? Over in the corner, under some trees? In the middle, by the pond? No one should make those decisions when they're grieving."


She seemed pretty sure that she would be the one to go first, I said. 


"Well, I may not be," she shrugged. "But I might."


I didn't say so, but one thing's for sure: No matter where she ends up in a particular cemetery, whoever goes to visit her is probably going to drive by the group of trees in the back, AND the pond in the middle, AND the mausoleum, AND the group of trees again, AND...