July 12, 2021
The last place my mother wanted to be buried was next to her mother and father in the city cemetery of Winchester, TN. I think it had something to do with her being an only child and what that might look like. Her mother who lived to be 99 knew mom’s feelings on this. Nevertheless she insisted on buying a third plot to go with her and grandpa’s grave. His remains have been there since 1972.
“Well, I’m gonna get you this plot. You don’t know what might happen. You need a place to be buried,” granma said with that ending note of finality that she was famous for.
It must have been sometime after my parent’s divorce that she decided on this course. My grandmother was not one to be dissuaded by what people wanted. She was ruled by practicality. The third cemetery plot was a theme repeated by Flora less often than commentary on the weather but on par with the importance of church.
Mom never asked for a memorial stone either. Nevertheless, when mom died I got together with Uncle John to purchase a small 6 x 12 inch granite memorial which he placed on the property of his house on the Tennessee River. (Linda and John are really mom’s first cousins, but felt like siblings to mom.)
John’s river house was a cherished meeting place for the cousins and other family for over a decade. Now most of those people are gone and John recently sold the property and removed mom’s memorial along with several other stones he had placed there. Tomorrow, on my way to my birthplace I will stop in Jasper, TN to pick up the memorial stone Uncle John has stored in a barn.
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I guess there is something to be said for the power of reflective writing. Before I began this journal entry today I had planned on placing mom’s stone in the city cemetery in Winchester next to her parents. Somehow it seemed appropriate. I couldn’t be accused of going against her wishes. If you remember, I scattered her remains in the Tennessee River—the flakes of white bone sparkling in the sunlight amidst a milky way cloud of ash. So technically she wouldn’t be buried next to her parents. Furthermore, though she had an adversarial relationship with her mother it was also a fidelitous bond of love. Surely she wouldn’t be opposed to having a marker there.
Now I’m rethinking the whole thing. Mom would have shot down my technicality defense. How many dying wishes of my mother can I deny?
It was also her deathbed wish that I take care of her partner Marrietta. I ignored that. Marrietta and I’d had the verbal equivalent of a knock-down, drag-out fight a week before my mom finally succumbed to lung cancer in 2010. I hadn’t spoken to her since.
Mom kept secret a large part of her life from her mother. When she had a lobe of her lung removed in 2005 I was instructed to run interference from California and tell granma that mom had severe laryngitis and could not talk. But granma knew something was up.
About mom’s homosexuality she said, “I know what they are doing.” That is the extent of any conversation I ever had with her regarding my mother’s 14-year relationship with Marrietta. Granma knew Marrietta, who was often present during visits. But whatever mom and Marrietta’s relationship was, it wasn’t discussed.
Three years ago I learned on Facebook that Marrietta had died a few months earlier. I thought it had been a lingering illness. A few days ago I learned that she’d fallen backwards off a porch and had not been discovered for a few hours, yelling for help with a broken back. So much for looking after her. I still don’t know the whole story.
Now, at the very least, I need to do some follow up work. If there is a way to show mom and Marrietta’s relationship in death, I need to do that. Whatever my own difficulties were with Marrietta, my mother had a partner she loved.
I’m hoping to enlist my nephew Anthony on a little investigative work to Clyde, North Carolina where Marrietta died. It’s an extra task in this trip and I’ll have the extra weight of a twenty-five pound rock, but at least I can mark off tracking down a Mr. Napper, the Head of Public Works in Winchester. He is the person with the cemetery map and would know which side, granma’s or granpa’s, that third plot would be on.
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Driving through the Oakes Day Lily display garden the other day I saw a small bird chasing a hawk at low altitude, parallel to my truck. The hawk, in its escape, disappeared behind some bushes with the little bird fast on its tail. When the hawk reappeared it was coming straight at me, aimed toward my grill. It just had time to veer out of my path. Maybe this helped me to change direction on my memorial placement ideas.
Incidentally, I was on my way to borrow a machete to help hack my way to another memorial site—one on my father’s side. So you can see I’m up to my eyeballs in memorial thoughts.
I may post some pictures of that excursion which included an exciting treasure hunt inside a shed that no one has been inside in sixty years.
Dad often said that he came from a long line of cold, distant and aloof people. It may have been an exaggeration—but witness me—perhaps the only person left who cares enough to hack through a Tennessee rainforest to find some lost memorial slabs.
Spotty West Goes East 