Headstones and Homesteads

I ran an errand today and ended up sitting at my Grandparents’ gravesite.

I don’t know why, really. I’m not much of a grave visitor.

I had a rough day today. But I’ve had other rough days and none have sent me running to their grave. Perhaps it is just that I happened to be by myself this afternoon and wanted just a few more minutes of solitude before switching gears from day job Me to Wife and Mamma. It’s never good to bring the day home.

So I pulled into the cemetery and quickly found their bench.

My Grandparents’ headstone is a bench just big enough for two to sit close together. After my Grandmother died, he selected it so he could sit and visit with her.

It’s a nice bench. As I approached, I noticed that one of my aunts had recently placed Easter flowers at their bench and trimmed the grass around their stone and the Great Grandmother’s next to them. I touched the granite, skimming over their names, the dates, the loving words carved from Him to Her…

I sat down on their bench for just a second on this beautiful spring afternoon before the tears started to fall. But the tears were not for them; they were not tears of grief. Somehow sitting there allowed me to unload all of the pent-up bad day inside. A million thoughts and worries swirled in my head and I spoke to them both, asking for advice and for help as I have so many times before.

As I sat on their bench, I looked across the cemetery to their house and their yard. I breathed deeply and smelled the exact smell of my Grandparents’ yard on Easter Sunday. I always thought their yard smelled like Magic on Easter Sunday. I noticed the breeze as it came up from the river just beyond the trees and remembered how that breeze blew across their yard on lazy summer afternoons as we floated lazily in the pool watching the hot sun dip lower in the sky until it was too cool to stay in the water any longer. I heard the sound of the breeze blowing through the trees just the same as it did all those years ago when we all laughed and played in that yard. A million memories swirled in my head as I remembered all of us – siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles – growing up together in that yard.

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Moments later, two birds – robins perhaps – came from the direction of their yard, playing in the warm spring wind. They flew directly over me and their bench, skipping back and forth together as they flew. I watched them until they disappeared from sight and noticed that my tears had dried.

Slowly, I rose and walked among the surrounding headstones – relatives all, resting here together. As I looked down the hill and across the cemetary, I could see the rooftops of all of their homes – the cluster they called “Up Home” and the others surrounding it. I matched names to chimneys and noticed just how closely they had lived to one another, yards and lives connected – then and even now.

Many have moved on from those homes for just as many reasons, but it will still always belong to them, this neighborhood they called Home. It was time for me to leave now, too. I took one last breath of that Easter Sunday Magic from the breeze and headed for my car. My worries had not disappeared, but my thoughts seemed lighter and my soul felt more at peace.

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This post was previously published on The Meaning of Me and is republished here with permission from the author.
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