Saturday, May 24, 2014

Memorial

The city cemetery on the corner of 90th South and 7th East is not exactly a serene resting spot. It is bordered by a 7-Eleven and a Domino's Pizza and two steady streams of noisy traffic. A Liberty Tax Service is not more than a hundred yards down the street, where, from January 1st to April 14th, a woman dressed in a Statue of Liberty costume stands outside the storefront, dealing passing motorists a double whammie. No, nothing in life is certain, except death and taxes.

Normally when we pass the cemetery my daughter points and exclaims, "That's where Frankenweenie's buried!" But today she is fast asleep, worn out from an afternoon at the children's museum. Even without her prompting, I notice the cemetery today. It is dotted with color - dozens and dozens of brightly wrapped mums decorating the lowly headstones. Despite its unfortunate location, the cemetery is suddenly bright and beautiful with the sentiment of remembrance.

At home I don gardening gloves and kneel at the flower bed in front of the garage. I dig a shallow hole and plant a fledgling Clematis into the earth, wrapping strands of the tender vine around a trellis. My paternal grandmother had a Clematis against the south side of her red brick house. I remember as a child being astonished at the creeping, climbing plant and its delicate flowers that looked like purple stars.

In the middle of the night, I am awakened by memories, memories vivid and textured. The thick, serrated red brick of my paternal grandparents' home. The sycamore in their front yard, with its shaggy, crumbling bark that we would peel away, revealing a smooth, dappled green. The bumpy ceiling in the front room that seemed to sparkle and reminded me of stalactite. The oval portrait hanging next to the front door, cloudy and in muted tones, of Mary Ione, my grandmother's mother.

Mary Ione died from influenza when Anna, my grandmother, was just a baby. When I was a child, each Memorial Day we joined my grandmother on a pilgrimage of sorts to visit her mother's grave. We piled into station wagons and pick-up trucks and drove south on I-15, the Wasatch Front to our left, the Oquirrh Mountains to our right. It was as if we were cradled in the palm of the Rock of Ages himself. We drove into the land we had claimed, past sagebrush and farmland, past towns named after our Book of Mormon prophets: Lehi, Nephi, Moroni. We would reach the little plot of earth where my grandmother's mother lay, my grandmother arranging us cousins around the humble headstone like flowers.

In the middle of the night, I am awakened by regret, regret tender and forgiving, but painful still. I regret that I always viewed my grandmother as Grandma and nothing more - as a woman who was soft and pillowy and doled out cookies and smiles. I regret that I never asked my grandmother what it was like to grow up without her mother, that I never asked her what it was like to raise ten children in a home with only two bathrooms, that I never asked what interests she had beyond her church and family. I regret that I never wondered if she ever visited her mother's grave in Moroni alone, and rested her smooth cheek against the cool gravestone, and whispered her hopes and heartache to the woman she loved but never knew.

In the middle of the night, I am comforted by the thought of the Clematis growing in my garden, its roots extending into the earth, grounding my memory of her.








9 comments:

  1. 'The bumpy ceiling in the front room that seemed to sparkle and reminded me of stalactite.'

    Immediate and lovely mental image.

    Kim, I've been thinking a lot about all of my grandparents lately since I lost my last one this year. My first went in 1998, the second in 2007, the third in 2011 and the fourth in 2014. I was thinking, one morning this week, about where they are. It couldn't enter my mind that they were and were no more. I even asked my most recently deceased grandmother. Later that day, in a book about our experience of time, I read those exact words: 'Think how strange, the experience of having been and being no more.' That wasn't the only prominent synchronicity that happened that day.

    If I were you, I would ask her your questions now. Answers are attracted to questions like magnets. And now is more than just the present moment.

    xx

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  2. Suze, what a lovely proposition :) Yes, I have lost all of my grandparents too, and sometimes the loss hits me harder than others. Thank you for sharing that experience with me... I hope you are finding healing as you grieve your most recent loss.

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  3. What beautiful sentiments about your family! I've been working on my genealogy, and every time I type in a name, I wonder what happened between the day they came into the world and the day they left. I want to know more than just their name, their spouse's name, and a list of dates. I wish I could ask them. Someday I will. :)

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    1. Look at you go! Genealogy is one of those tasks that terrifies me for some reason. But, as a writer, like you, I have such a bias for story - and if I could learn the stories behind the names, that would be a motivator for me.

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  4. This sounds like me at night time. Right before I sleep, I start thinking about family, regrets, and the past. And I do remember those details with popcorn ceilings, certain pictures and tapestries...unforgettable.

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    1. Popcorn ceilings! I knew there was a better name for that :)
      And yes, sometimes at night that door opens, and the memories just flood in...

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  5. So lovely! Thanks for sharing this, Kim.

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  6. I love this story, and you tell it so beautifully! So glad you shared!

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  7. I draw-like-a-‘nom-de-plume’ our long-years-of-faith -2- decipher the voracious dynamic -2- make a perfectly cognizant, fully-spectacular, Son-ripened-Heaven… yet, I’m not sure if we're on the same page if you saw what I saw. Greetings, earthling. Because I was an actual NDE on the outskirts of the Great Beyond at 15 yet wasn’t allowed in, lemme share with you what I actually know Seventh-Heaven’s Big-Bang’s gonna be like: meet this ultra-bombastic, ex-mortal-Upstairs for the most extra-groovy-paradox, treasureNpleasure-beyond-measure, Ultra-Yummy-Reality-Addiction in the Great Beyond for a BIG-ol, kick-ass, party-hardy, robust-N-risqué, eternal-warp-drive you DO NOT wanna miss the sink-your-teeth-in-the-rrrock’nNsmmmokin’-hot-deal. YES! For God, anything and everything and more! is possible!! Meet me Upstairs. Cya soon…

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