Visiting her

This day is a tough one to share, to write about - it’s some of my rawest writing. So I have to warn you that this is a sad one! But it’s how it was.

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It took me over a year, more than five seasons, to go back to the cemetery.

I waited until the one-year anniversary came and went, then waited some more.

I would go when the snow came and bring a Christmas wreath.

I would go for Memorial Day with one of those plastic wreaths.

I would go in July with an American flag.

But it wasn’t until my mother’s birthday in August, that I finally went with nothing at all. Exactly 14 miles from the grass my children played on to the grass covering her grave.

It was a huge cemetery with four different roads, each with a fork, all intertwining and coming back to the keeper’s building. I worried I wouldn’t remember the right road, the right turn, the right grave.

But I knew where to go, even after a year, after only being there once. I turned left, then right, then left, and parked without hesitation. I got out, my face showing nothing, my heart remembering everything. I walked, stepping over and upon graves, cutting diagonal, heading for the lilacs.

I found the stone and brushed it clear of five seasons. My mother’s name was still there. She’d still died Jan. 19, 2007. It was all still true.

I pleased to see the ground had healed over nicely. There was no square cut of grass like I’d expected. And, just as I remembered, a huge white pine stood next to it, with lilacs not far behind it.

After a moment, I found the nerve to walk over my mother. To sit down in the middle of her plot. To consider her lying there, beneath me. Impossible. Even as I’d seen it with my own eyes.

Then, I did what I’d come to do. I laid my body down on the length of her grave.

I was careful to position myself as she was, face up, my head at the same end, my feet facing the distant road. I crossed my arms across my chest and joined my hands, like the last time I’d seen my mother’s. Then, I got very still and very quiet.

I felt the wind come through the lone pine above me. I saw a cloud cross the sky. Both, a break in the hot sun I lay in. The sweat began to edge down the middle of my back, and my shirt grew dark. I looked straight up. My mother’s new view, I thought. I tried to see the lilacs but they were too far back above our heads. My mother would never see them, even though we’d picked this spot because of them.

I stayed.

Straight above, I saw the underside of the soft white pine needles in bundles of five. I knew this from science class, remembered it from middle school. I could not count the 5s from where I was. I could, however, pick out the select yellowing needles that would fall in a few short months. My eyes followed the fan of needles to the slender branch, to the woody limb, to the thick trunk, down, down, down, to the ground, into the grass. To where the roots must be, under me, and then, under my mother.

I stayed.

The beauty of such a huge cemetery was that there was privacy and, who knew, maybe just over the knoll another daughter lay above another mother.

I stayed.

Finally, I rolled over and placed my face against the grass, rough from the hot, lonely summer. More pine needles became apparent. My hair, longer than my mother had ever seen it, fell around my face and shut out the world. I lay face-to-face - with my mother.

I stayed.

I could see a tiny square of dirt. I could see it, feel it, taste it. And, in the unbearable heat of the sun, of the moment, I asked one small thing: Mom?

In the resounding silence, I wished and raged and sobbed and begged and swore. I did all this, felt all this, and said all this - and not once did my mother answer.

Where was she?

At last, I gave up.

I stood up, dried my tears and brushed myself off. She wasn’t there. In some ways, I was bereft. I wanted her here, at the cemetery, somewhere I could come find her whenever I needed her. To talk to cry, to remember.

But, in the end, it was a blessing. Because I learned that day that I could - and later would - find her everywhere that I went. I found her laughter in the pines I hiked through along the lake. I found her scent in the lilac blossoms every June. I found her touch when I played with my boys - her grandsons - in the summer grass.

She was nowhere, yet she was everywhere. And when I finally tuned into that, I started to heal.

I could visit her anytime I wanted, wherever I was.

❤️