Flowers

The following few posts were written in August, about a month after I had returned from a visit to the town where my mom grew up and where my aunts and uncles (her brothers) still live. While I was visiting there, I visited her grave and talked with my aunts and uncles about her. I didn't get around to publishing these posts until now (late October).

This is a longer story than I'd like it to be. And it keeps going. Ironically, it probably started just three weeks after I wrote my last post (way back in May) but it's taken until now to hit me enough to write about it. It's not pleasant and I'd rather be writing about something else but, it is. I am living it.

This week I wrote a thank you card to my aunt- for putting flowers on my mother's grave.

I had been putting off writing this note for the longest time and I couldn't figure out why. I was genuinely grateful to her for putting the flowers on my mom's headstone. Seeing them there had been a literal bloom of happiness in an otherwise desperate and sad situation. And I had plans of sending this thank you card to her long before her birthday so that it wouldn't be confused with the flowers I was going to send her on her birthday. My plan was to send her flowers that looked just like the ones she had put on my mother's grave- a way of returning the favor she had done for me (or maybe it was for my mom). I wanted to associate the two but not totally- wanted the thank you card far enough away so that she wouldn't feel like her birthday flowers were connected with my mother's death.

See, the thing you need to know about my aunt's birthday is that it is the day before the day my mother died. I never knew this until my aunt told me this summer. It was in the context of an afternoon in which she was talking about my mom- retelling stories of her life, the things they did together, and about the time leading up to her death. She said that my mother had hoped that she wouldn't die on my aunt's birthday. And from the look on my aunt's face as she was telling me this, I think it was always a little hard for her to have the days so close together: a celebration one day, a loss the next. And I imagine it was like that the year that my mom died- a cautionary tone to my aunt's birthday that year, knowing that my mother was in the hospital and we all were just waiting. But I also know that my mother would never have wanted that- would never have wanted my aunt's birthday to be anything other than a celebration and fun.

So I wanted to send flowers to my aunt on her birthday this year- let her know that her birthday was cause for celebration and life and that if my mom were still alive, she would send her beautiful yellow roses like the ones my aunt had given her.
Only...
The ones my aunt gave her were plastic.
And they were plastic because they needed to be outside, in a metal vase, attached to my mother's headstone, in a cemetery.
And I suppose that's where this story started.

This summer I went to visit Indiana- my mom's home. All of her brothers (my uncles) still live there- she's the only one who left. We used to go there in the summers when she was alive- presumably so that she could visit with her mom and catch up with old friends. We always went there in the summers after she died. We would usually spend three weeks there- my brother, my sister, and I- and we would stay at my grandma's lake house- the California cousins fully doted on by their aunts and loving Grandma.
I had a pretty clear intention when I went to visit this year. I knew I was going to visit my mother's grave. I had been coming to terms with the reality that my mother had died 37 years ago- that she no longer existed, that my interactions with her were completely made up, by me. I thought that visiting her grave would be a difficult but necessary act that would help me say goodbye to her- accept that she had died. It felt both poetic and real at the same time. On the one hand, I could actually say goodbye to her- her actual physical grave. On the other hand, it would be a good reality check for me- to visit the place where she was actually buried.
I only told one of my aunts that I was going to visit her. And mostly I only told her because her house was the first one I was visiting and so she would need to know why I was taking so long to drive from the airport in Chicago to her house on Lake Michigan. She was kind about it, asked if I wanted company, and checked in on me several times before the day to make sure that I wanted to do it alone. I assured her that, in fact, that was exactly what I wanted to do. (I wanted this to be on my own- to be private. I was scared of sharing it with anyone else. I had no idea what it was going to be and was afraid of what I would have to say if anyone else was involved. I pictured myself kneeling at her grave, pulling away the overgrown weeds the way my grandma used to do- taking care of her headstone after years of neglect since my grandmother died.)

So I followed my aunt's directions and drove my little Chevy Spark all the way to South Bend Indiana, past the shopping mall, in to the iron gates of the cemetery where my mother was buried. I was familiar with this cemetery. We passed it every time we went to the mall (which was often) and every time we drove from my grandma's house in town to her house on the lake. We also actually visited it- whenever my grandma got the chance. She never asked us if we wanted to go- just turned left instead of right, and then we were there, at my mother's grave, watching my grandma kneel and say prayers at her first born and only daughter's grave.

So I knew where to go when I got there- or so I thought. I thought that when I got there, I would remember which path to turn down, which section she was in. I also thought that if I forgot, there would be directory of graves or at least someone I could ask. But it turned out that there was not. The building that I thought was a directory turned out to be a mausoleum and the only people working there were groundskeepers who had no idea where anyone was buried and told me to come back on Tuesday. So I was left to memory.
I backed up the car and re entered the cemetery as if I were in my grandma's Chevy Horizon: straight ahead, veer to the right, stop when you get to the spigot, then cross the street to your mother's grave. But the spigot wasn't there. I drove a little farther but could tell that it was the wrong section so I drove back in again and stopped where the spigot would have been and parked the car. I crossed the street to where my mother's grave should have been but it wasn't there. I searched the headstones near the path for any headstones of my family (my mother's grandparents and my grandma are all buried adjacent to my mom) but none were familiar. I considered calling my aunt to ask her if she knew where it was but I knew she hadn't visited often enough to know. Then I considered calling my brother but thought that he would direct me the same way that I had followed: it's across from the spigot. I started to walk away but saw a small black sign that said 'Catholic section' so I knew I had to be in the right place.
As I walked deeper in, I finally saw our family name: the double headstone of my great grandparents who had died together in an auto accident. I felt relief and began walking slowly among the sunken headstones and came across my grandmother's. But as I continued, the next headstone was foreign, someone else's family plot. I turned around, looked for my mom's, but couldn't find it anywhere. I doubled back, circled around, wondered if my memory had served me incorrectly- thought that maybe my mom had been buried in a separate section. But then I recalled how my great aunt (my godmother) was the one who got buried in a separate section- that they had given her plot to my mom when she died.
"She has to be here," I thought to myself, and I started to panic. How could I not find my mom's headstone? And how would I find it if it weren't here? I pictured myself methodically walking the entire Catholic section but knew that was futile: she had always been here, right near the double grave. I began walking the other direction, away from the double grave, but it felt wrong, desperate, her grave had always been straight across from the spigot.
And then I saw it out of the corner of my eye: Patricia Anne Brasseur- the bronze letters all in caps.
But above her name was a vase of yellow flowers. That made no sense. No one had visited her. My grandma had died over twenty years ago and none of my mother's friends lived close enough to visit her and tend to her grave. And no one knew I was coming except....

I smiled. It must have been my aunt. She must have known that I was coming and put fresh flowers on my mother's grave for me. I reached for them then noticed they were plastic.
"Plastic?" I thought. "Not that aunt. She would never put plastic flowers on the grave of my mother- it just would never happen."
I wondered who put them there and laughed at myself for my panic in not finding my mom right in front of me- so sure I was that her grave would be overgrown and unkempt.
And then I sat down in front of it, cross legged, and traced the letters of her name with my fingertips. I wanted to be caressing my mom's name the same way I would be stroking her arm or her cheek. But my fingers met metal, they traced bold block letters, my eyes saw numbers and dates.
"This is a piece of metal," I noticed. "This is grass." "This is a headstone."
I cried.
"She's not here either," I heard myself say.

And that's when I realized that I was still looking for her. Even though I thought I was being all grown up, even when I thought I was doing the right thing by visiting her actual grave, by finally saying goodbye to her at the right place, by finally accepting that she was gone... I wasn't. I wasn't accepting her death, I was expecting her to be here. I was expecting that we would meet here and I could say goodbye to her as if she still existed.
"She's not here either," I told myself, and got up in disappointment and walked away.

I got back in the Chevy Spark, made a U-turn, and then turned right, toward the mall, to meet my aunt for lunch.
As we sat down, I thanked her for putting flowers on my mom's grave.
"That wasn't me honey," she explained. "It must have been your Aunt Dawn, bless her heart."

And then we talked about other things and I followed her in my car up to her lake house in Michigan.

Later that week I got a chance to visit with my other aunt, the wife of my oldest uncle- the one who was closest in age to my mom.
"Did you put flowers on my mom's grave?" I asked her.
She smiled.
"How did you know I was going to visit her?" I asked.
"Oh no," she explained. "I didn't know you were going to visit. I just put them there a while ago. I visit when I can, but not that often," she said in apology.
"Well it meant a lot to me to see them there," I said. "It was like someone was taking care of her. Thank you," I said, and she smiled.

We talked quite a bit during my visit. I had shared with her that I didn't really know my mom that well- we just didn't talk about her much when I was growing up and I think she took this as a cue. She started telling me everything she could remember: how they had dropped my uncle off at the train when he was drafted. How she had first met my mom when they drove to the grocery store with my grandma. How my mom liked to dress well, how she was a healthy eater long before anyone was in to nutrition, how involved and interested she had been in my aunt's daughter's life. And she talked about how angry my mom was that she had to die- why it had to be her, how she had done nothing wrong to get breast cancer, and how she had to leave the three of us behind.
And that was when she mentioned about her birthday being the day before my mom died- and how much no one wanted it to be the same day, and how grateful everyone was that it wasn't. She said she felt that my mom knew that she was going to die when she had visited that last summer. She felt like she was saying goodbye when she told my aunt, "You were a good friend."

It was hard to hear this- hard to hear that she had to go through this, that she was sad, that she had to accept her death, that she had to say goodbye. But it was also touching- to hear my aunt talk about these memories, to feel connected t o my mom as an actual person, to begin to know who she was. I finally understood why my aunt had taken me shopping every summer and why she always wanted me to have an "outfit"- my mom had been stylish, had been in to clothes, it would have made her cringe to see the way I dressed like a tom-boy with absolutely no care for how I looked. My aunt had been trying to keep my mother alive for me- do the things my mom would have been had she been here.

So when I finally got back from my trip to Indiana, I decided to write my aunt a letter. I wanted to let her know how much it meant to me to be met with a vase of bright yellow flowers when I was feeling lost and desperate in a cemetery, looking for my mother's grave, so that I could finally say goodbye to her, accept her death.
I knew I wasn't going to include all those other parts- the parts about accepting her death- mostly that I was thankful to her for taking care of my mother's grave and for trying to keep her spirit around for me in our summer shopping and in the stories that she had shared with me.

And then it was August, almost an entire month after I had gotten home and I still hadn't written the letter. I put it on my to do list- and it just kept moving farther and farther up the list without getting crossed out. I picked out the card I was going to write it on. I felt what was going on with me and accepted that I would write it when I felt like writing it. But then it was coming closer to my aunt's birthday. I knew I had to write it far enough before her birthday to not associate the two. Yet still, something in me didn't want to write it.

And then, on Sunday afternoon, I sat down to write it. I wrote it on my computer first- something about me felt like I needed to compose it first, before sending it- that I might need to write what I felt and then edit down what I actually sent to her.
As soon as I typed the first sentence, it hit me in the gut.
I wanted to thank you for putting flowers on my mother's grave.
My mother's grave.
My mother has a grave.
You only have a grave if you are dead.
And she has a grave.
I know because I visited it.
I know because I was there when she was lowered in to it.
She was lowered in to it.
She was put in the ground and I was there.
I don't remember it but it must have happened because this summer I visited my mother's grave.
And my mother must have a grave because I am thanking my aunt for putting flowers on it.
My mother has a grave.
My mother died.
She said goodbye to her friends. She said goodbye to her children. She went to the hospital, everyone waited, she died, and then they had funerals and I attended them.
My mother has a grave.
She is dead.

And if experience tells me anything, I will not accept it this way either. I will likely continue to hold out for her existence, will still want to see her again, will still believe that someday we will be together.
Probably because I was six, sometimes still am six, or maybe it's just because I really loved her- maybe it's just really hard to say goodbye to your mom.