The Lot
by
Jeff Stimpson © 2005
A stone of black and gray granite sits in the
shade of a small tree, in a nest of short, sharp grass a few steps
from the woods. A plant near the stone has faded bluish flowers in
an old plastic pot.
I've been on this spot many times with many
different people. I picked the stone at a local monument shop 27
years ago. For most of my life, "LeRoy A. Stimpson, Father,
1917-1974" were the only words engraved on it, in black letters on
the gray granite, flecked with brown, dead lengths of mowed grass. I
was here many times with my mother, to what we always called "the
lot," helping her to lug water from the faucet up the gravel road.
Flowers need water.
We bounce down the gravel road of the cemetery,
passing white granite slabs with engravings that have softened in
the elements since 1810, 1832, 1877, 1919. We bump and bounce past
the first Stimpson lot, that of my father's parents. I never met
them.
Then we do the gentle left turn and the gentle
right turn on the crunching gravel and pull up to the next Stimpson
stone. I have come here today with new people, but I still brought
flowers. Jill picked them out at a farm stand near where we're
vacationing, down on the coast of Maine. Here, near the middle of
the state, I lay the flowers. They are orange gladiolas. I think my
mother used to say my father loved gladiolas. We have also bought a
pot of mums.
New words have appeared on this stone since I saw
it last: "Nettie S., Mother, 1922-1998." Actually, only the "1998"
is new. They stopped mining this black granite in the 1980s, and a
long time ago my mother was told that if she wanted a marker stone
that matched the headstone and my dad's marker (which is a smaller
stone, usually engraved with one word and laid at the foot of the
grave), she would need to get one while she was still alive. She
did, and even had her name and birthday engraved on the headstone to
save her kids the cost later. My sister called that "creepy," but
all we had to do, when the time came, was have the year of her death
added.
That turned out to be 1998. My brother and sister
scattered her ashes here without me. I couldn't come home then
because of Alex, and I have not been here since.
Jill has come with me today. So has Alex and so
has Ned. Ned's asleep in the car. Jill takes Alex on a walk in the
expanse of mowed grass, toward the shed where I guess they keep the
lawn mowers. It's all lovely lawn. This cemetery hasn't expanded as
much as I expected it would have by now.
We brought nothing to dig, so I pull out a Swiss
Army knife and gouge the dry grass and the dirt, clawing to make a
little hole to set the pot of mums. No one else is in the cemetery.
The rows of stones stare at me in the slight, hot breeze, as the
dirt turns my fingernails black. I guess it hasn't rained here in a
long time. I set the pot in the little hole and spy a battered old
plastic milk jug hung on the faucet that is still up the road.
I'm halfway to the faucet when I begin to cry. My
mother never met Alex, and that has made me feel incomplete for
months and months, but I was never inspired to cry before. Here's
the milk jug, hung on the tap by a loop of string. That's something
mum would have done. I cry now, suddenly and deeply, covering my
cheeks with hot water on a hot day.
I fill the jug and bring it back and see Jill
laying three pebbles on top of the headstone. "We leave stones," she
explains. One for her, one for Alex and one for Ned. Ned is still
asleep in the car. She and Alex go for another walk and I go to a
trash can to find something in which to plant the gladiolas. Come to
think of it, it may have been my mother who loved gladiolas. I don't
remember. I keep crying on the way to the trash can and on the way
back to the stone.
I don't find a pot, so I pour water into the
plastic bag that's wrapped around the stems of the glads. I water
the bluish flowers in the old plastic pot, too. I don't know who
left them here. Once my mother and I brought a beautiful basket of
flowers to my dad's grave, and within a week somebody stole it.
Once, on this lot, my cousin said "How you doin', tiger?" and hugged
me. I haven't seen that cousin in years.
Jill brings Alex back, and I pick him up. I
introduce him to my parents, but of course all he thinks is that I'm
talking to a stone. He squirms to get down again to the sharp, hot
grass. I begin to cry harder, and to shake. Jill tells Alex that
"daddy is sad because he misses his mommy."
I doubt Alex will remember this, and that's good:
When I was a kid, I used to hate getting hauled around to hot
cemeteries in the woods, left to run between stones while the
grown-ups fiddled with pots of flowers. Once a piece of an old white
concrete headstone fell on me and scratched my cheek. Cemeteries are
no places for kids.
"We can stay as long as you want, Jeff," Jill
says. She knows that Maine is a long way from New York, that this
spot in the shade of a small tree is a long way from where we live
our life. Alex and Jill head off again. I return the milk jug to the
tap. I'm unsure what else I should be doing. I'm still sobbing and I
can't stop. Sobbing seems as automatic here as breathing.
I look down at Jill's pebbles and the big black
granite stone and tell my parents that I miss them, and that I will
be back again. I don't say when. It feels like I shouldn't have
come, and that I should never leave.
We get in the car. We strap Alex in the car seat
and shut the doors, and I steer Jill and Alex and Ned back out over
the gravel. Jill asks if I'm sure we stayed long enough. I say yes.
I ask her how Ned is. She says he is still asleep.
Copyright 2005 Jeff Stimpson, all rights reserved
