Picnicking with my dead relatives

I submitted the following as an essay piece to 'The Globe and Mail'.  It didn't get in, but I think it should have.  Anyway, as I have speculated, I think the senior editors there google me and don't like my blog -- even after a junior had approved it for publication.  (That pissed me off.)  That's the trouble with my name:  I'm the only one in the world with it.

Here is the essay:

Picnicking with my dead relatives

My grandmother's generation.

When my grandmother was still alive, no Sunday was complete without a visit to the family plot.  There, she would place flowers on my grandfather’s grave and pay respects to other family buried there.  As children, we were always expected to go along on these weekly, after-Church excursions – boring as I found them at the time.

 

My grandmother’s father had been an undertaker in Brockville and with the family name “Lord”, naturally, she was teased.  “The Lord came down to bury the dead,” her friends would say.  Nevertheless, she was very comfortable with death and trips to cemeteries. 

 

We always made an annual summer visit to Brockville to visit her parents’ graves and yes, we planted flowers there too.  She told stories of accompanying her father to the homes of the dead to help him lay them out in the family parlour in preparation for the wakes that would be held.  Claude Jutras’ film ‘Mon Oncle Antoine’ reminded me of the tales she would tell of these visits to the bereaved.  It both fascinated and scared me.

        

We were also expected to plant flowers at my grandfather’s grave every Spring.  For the bleak, cold winters, she had us plant small evergreens which we trimmed in the summer.  We would wander off, while she lingered, and drift through the neighbouring tombs and plots.  My imagination would kick in, as I wondered about those long-dead souls who rested nearby.  Some names I knew because their children and grandchildren were in some of my classes.  Some headstones were very simple, others tall and elaborate.  

 

Not far from our family plot were rows and rows of small tombstones marking the military men and women who had gruesomely died defending Canada.  No one ever seemed to visit those lonely, lost souls.   

 

But the graves that stuck with me were those of babies and young children, often adorned with concrete angels.  Many were younger than I, or the same age.  How could they be dead, I wondered?  Might I too die soon?  These were perplexing, existential thoughts of which I could make no sense.  My grandfather had been an old man, not a child.  That was normal in my world. 

 

Death is a part of life, my mother always said and she began taking me to funeral parlours when I was very young.  The memories I have of these visits were of the scent of flowers juxtaposed with the sight of old people dressed up in their finery and laid out in coffins surrounded by weeping relatives.  “Doesn’t she look wonderful,” some would say, as they approached the coffin.  No, she doesn’t, I would think.  She looks dead.

 

That cemetery was where my father taught me to drive.  “You can’t kill anyone here,” he always laughed as I navigated winding lanes and steep inclines fumbling with a standard transmission that required stopping and starting on hills without stalling.

 

Yes, I learned very young that death was indeed a part of life.  When my brother and father died, my mother bought another plot nearby; our original being full by this time.  Now visits to the cemetery were longer, as we had to visit and care for both sites.  I don’t know when it started, but one day my mother suggested we bring along some lemonade, a few sandwiches and a blanket.  Afterall, we were landowners there.  

 

Thus began a tradition of picnics with family members – departed and living.  Every nice day, someone would suggest a cemetery picnic and off we would go.  Early pictures are of my mother sitting on grass over the family plot helping to plant flowers.  Later she would rest beneath it.  Picnic fare consisted of her favourite sandwiches – cuccumber or tomato on white bread with the crusts cut off.  Trust the Brits to elevate vegetable sandwiches to a high art when meat was scarce.  

 

Often, I would make egg or tuna salad, finishing off with peanut butter and jam and always, always a thermos of tea. Vegetables, fruit and dessert were added to the fare, as these events became more elaborate. 

As time went on, I began to pack elegant cocktails to replace the lemonade.  When my mother joined the departed gathering, no eyebrows were raised to this embellishment.  Often, we invited friends to join us, as we picnicked among many famous Canadians.  Sir Robert Borden, Canada’s eighth prime minister, John Rodolphus Booth, lumber baron, Sir Sanford Flemming, inventor of time zones, and Archibald Lampman, poet, are but a few. 

A nearby grave houses one of my bosses; another the son of a dear friend who tragically died at 24 of an epileptic seizure.  You never felt alone at that cemetery. 

 

As time went on, my husband and I thought it a good idea to get our affairs in order and purchase our own markers for the family plot.  Henceforth, picnics found us lounging on our own tombstones, contemplating the inevitable as we enjoyed lunches.  All that is missing on our stones are our dates of death.  Someone once remarked that on any headstone, the dash between the dates of birth and death tells the interesting part of the story.  Very true. 

  

When my mother-in-law died in England, we had her cremated and shipped over to join the gathering.  She now lies comfortably resting with my family, surrounded by the famous and infamous among the many species of birds and creatures that call the cemetery home. 

 

When we moved out west, we had one, final cemetery Caileigh.  It was a special moment and marked the end of my life of tranquil cemetery visits stretching back so many years.  We made one final trip around the grounds, saying goodbye to many friends and relatives and those lost soldiers nearby.  It was a sad moment, but the memories I have of picnicking with my relatives are ones I will cherish. 

Happily, I will be resting with them when my time comes; sadly there will be no one left to host picnics.