The Visits

Yesterday an aunt of mine, one of my father's older sisters, Tante Blanche, passed away in Belgium at the age of 85. I had always hoped I would have been able and allowed to see her one last time. I am so relieved and grateful in my heart of hearts that I have renewed friendships with three of her daughters. Distance has been a challenge in many instances in my 39 years in the US, but death has a way to sharpen even the most cutting concerns. The rather sudden death of Tante Blanche brought to the foreground some hard realities about my life here. My two younger sisters are buried in Georgia, very far away from Olympia; my father was cremated and his ashes were spread out at the cemetery of the Alzheimer's home he was living at in Oostende, Belgium. My mother died in Fort Worth, Texas and is not buried anywhere I know, since she donated her body to John Hopkins University. I have one living sibling, a brother a year younger than me who refuses any contact, even by mail, so it is like he is already dead. So the idea of going to visit the family graves on Memorial Day is surreal. Yes, I think that is a nice word for it. Much better than tragic or absurd. There is a very small grave I get to visit as often as I like, because it is that of my kitty Sneakers who lived with us for 13 years and who died after a stroke three years ago. I know, a cat, but I loved her, and it was like she knew she needed to die in our backyard, unlike our cats Tom and Sylvester who took ill one day and just disappeared in the afternoon light many years ago never to return. She knew I loved her, and she died at home, so I could bury her wrapped in her favorite blanket and with her favorite toy, in a small wooden coffin my husband made for her. So I could put wildflowers on her grave, and a little tombstone with a heart, that would allow me to walk up the steps past the hazelnut bushes to visit her and talk to her. Because she is the only dead soul I lost I can go talk to, go visit. I feel like a child because of the heartbreaking naive pity of it, that her little grave site is where I go to talk to her, and my dad when I miss him. It is almost inhuman to realize the sadness of it, or the realization that people who don't know me or my story and my life, would think me soft in the head. I am not, I just have no other way for a bit of closure, a bit of dignity amidst so much intense loss, anger and pain. I am glad my cousins can go to their mother's funeral the way it is supposed to happen. That they can visit their father's grave, and their sister's grave, as she died very young. And I am glad they can all go to the cemetery together, and that they all love and respect each other. I have a fondness for westerns, not because of all the fancy and gratuitous shoot outs, or fancy horse riding or the bar fights, but because often someone dies and is buried very far away from their family, and people have to leave the dead and buried person behind, never being able to really come back and visit the grave site again. It makes me feel my own circumstances about grave sites and cemeteries are not completely insane or impossible. So, this week I will think of my aunt, my father, and go see the little grave of Sneakers. She was family, and in my heart she will always be, and I can touch the cold little tombstone where the memory of her warm fur and heart still makes me smile, and cry.