HEY, MIND IF I BORROW YOUR MOM’S GRAVE
Blog post description.
ESSAYS
When my son graduated college, I pocketed a small stone from the university grounds to leave at my father’s grave. While placing it on his headstone, I shared details of the epic downpour in the middle of the ceremony and how handsome his grandson looked in his cap and gown. When my niece got married, I picked up a stone at the reception and brought it to him with gossipy details about the insane amount of money my brother had spent on the wedding. When I bought an apartment after the divorce. When I visited Estonia. When I finished my first novel. Stones like souvenirs from the land of the living would accumulate on my kitchen counter, awaiting my next trip to Boston to visit my mother. Conveniently, my father’s buried along the way. Sometimes when I’d get to his grave I’d find stones others had left. Sometimes my siblings found mine. Leaving stones is standard Jewish mourning practice, but not ones annotated with dates and places in sharpie; that’s just what I’m like. This tremendous need to remain connected, remain visible to my own resolute champion on this strange and lonely planet. But after we finally buried my mother next to him, I ended up moving 2,711 miles away. Alone.
About a month ago my friend Bray called me. His mother’s ashes happen to be interred in the same Mexican town where I just relocated. There was some confusion about an overdue payment for the crypt in the church where her urn is. Now, maybe that confusion was innocent and maybe it wasn’t, that’s not for me to say. But after she was cremated, when Bray handed the priest the cash for the crypt, the guy slipped it into his pocket and walked away. No receipt. No nothing. A year later Bray started getting emails saying he owed another $9,800 pesos (about $560 USD) and if the church didn’t receive payment they’d be forced to discard his mother’s ashes. Not kidding.
We've been friends since 1984 so over the years I’d gotten to know Bray’s mother. She spent her career as a personal shopper at Neiman Marcus and had legendary style and a gale-force personality that was a little scary in a familiar Boston kind of way. I liked her very much.
After months of increasingly exasperated emails with no resolution on how to pay the balance from abroad, and the end of the month approaching, Bray asked if I’d be willing to go hand the priest his blood money, and make sure to get a f***ing receipt. Well, I’m always up for an anti-shyster crypt-caper, especially one with a cynical takedown involved, and it turns out the church is only a fifteen minute walk from my new apartment. Plus I have nothing else to do and no one to do it with. I don’t know anyone here yet.
Disappointingly, Padre Josué was super nice and didn’t behave remotely like an extortionist. When I handed him the cash, he wrote out a detailed receipt like something yellowed you’d find in an attic proving nothing no-one can decipher. But then said he couldn’t give me the title-papers to the crypt because something was wrong with the power and he couldn’t open his computer. When I pointed to the light shining brightly in the ceiling directly above where we were sitting, he just shrugged. We made an appointment for me to come back in three days but with the residue of Bray’s ranting still dunked up in my ear, and my New York-scam-hackles up, I asked to see her crypt - because was there even one?
Padre Josué led me into a small, immaculate room off the sanctuary where three of the four walls are lined floor-to-ceiling with glass-fronted cubbies. He pointed to one on the back wall near the bottom, marked F3. Popped next to a pretty round container perched on a bright-white, lacy pillow, was a photograph of Bray’s mother and a clipping of Oración al Espíritu Santo. In the photograph, she looks just how I remember. Always so put together. Jet black hair pulled back tight. Perfect makeup. Perfect jewelry. I never saw her during her later years when, like my father, she was also battling cancer. Crouching down, I don’t know why, but I blurted, “Hello Carmen. Bray sent me to check up on you.”
On the morning my father took his last breath, I cut a lock of his hair and stored it in a ziplock baggie. On the one year anniversary of his death, I encased the hair in a locket of domed glass the size of a dime. People often ask if it’s moonstone. I wear it at family events or when I need to feel his guidance or encouragement. I left it to my sister in my will. Although currently it’s in a storage unit in New Jersey with the rest of my stuff.
My father was born in 1931 in North Adams, a small town up in the Berkshires. He lived his entire life, and will spend the rest of eternity within the state of Massachusetts; it was a different time. I’ve just retired and am now living in a gem of a place called San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Cobblestone streets. Fuchsia bougainvillea bursting around every corner. I’m delighted to be here and excited about my future - this third (and final?) act - and just you wait, I’m going to make it a doozie. Even so, I’m often lonely and feel cutoff from my family and friends. It’s difficult to picture the circumstances that would bring me within any kind of proximity to where my mother and father are buried. I miss them. Even the difficult one. I might be in my sixties, but I still want parents.
When I arrived at the church at the appointed time to pick up the title for Carmen’s grave, Padre Josué wasn’t there. Nor had he left the paperwork. I made a bit of a stink; I wasn’t leaving without it. So while I waited I went over to say hello. “Carmen, I don’t want to be disrespectful, but should I be worried about this priest? I just want to make sure you’re in a good situation. Long-term.”
I was alone in the crypt-room and it felt weirdly good to be sitting there with her. This complicated person I barely knew, who gave birth to a complicated person I treasure, and who’s been my dear friend for forty-two years. (Except for those eight or nine in the middle when you were… you know.) But I have to talk to him, this is not a good picture of her. “You were always so stylish. I’m trying to leave my New York behind and wear less black. I loved that burnt orange dress with the massive collar and no sleeves you wore to Bray’s wedding. It was beyond cool.”
It’s quiet and peaceful here. A good room. A good place to be. I was in the middle of telling her, “Caesar had a growth in her snout and had to be put down and I don’t understand why I’m still so brokenhearted over it. She was a million years old,” when Padre Josué came in holding a manilla folder. “Lo siento, no quiero interrumpirte” he said, backing out of the room.
Everything was in order. There were signatures and seals. Names and dates. Including an accurate accounting of both the deposit (!) Bray paid and the balance I paid. There was never anything sketchy. Even in this era of global constant contact, humans remain terrible communicators.
For me, I’d like a bench, in a park somewhere close to wherever my kids are. I don’t even need a plaque. And if they move, just pick a new bench. A place where teenagers can make out. Junkies can pass out. Retirees can do sudoku. And if I’m lucky, now and then, someone I love will stop by on their way home and walk me through the boring minutia of their day. Things that only a parent is willing to hear. Tell me every stupid detail.
I don’t believe my father still exists somewhere as the person I knew, and there’s no dead-parent-network where Carmen’s relaying information to him. But the other day when I was walking home, as the clouds greyed and the air thickened, I ducked into the church to wait out the rain. (Ok, that rain was nowhere near imminent.) “My son just finished his second week at his new job in DC and seems to be settling in. But he and his colleagues went out for happy hour and he went to work the next day hung over. I know to keep my fat mouth shut or he’ll never tell me anything, but I don’t know. It doesn’t mean he’s not taking this opportunity seriously, does it? What else. Let’s see. My daughter was just here visiting for a week. We took a fun cooking class. The teacher was crabby but the food was amazing. I didn’t know Arroz Verde had so many steps. You have to soak it, fry it, and steam it!”
I haven’t left Carmen any stones, the Catholics don’t do that, but I might anyway.
Roanne Kolvenbach: I'm a writer and multidisciplinary artist with an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School and a BFA in Ceramic Sculpture from Tulane University. I've been awarded seven international artist residencies, taught at Parsons School of Design, and am a longtime faculty member at The Truro Center for the Arts. After many years in New York City, I've relocated to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where I write and make things.
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