The first time I visit my dead dad’s grave the wind cuts my face. The snow is high and we don’t dare pull the car past the entrance of the driveway. After all, no one wants to be stuck at a cemetery — even if it is the only time I get to be by my dad these days. Grandpa lies a few feet away, and my Uncle Gordie, lying there too.
We trudge through the snow, my husband, my mother, my brother and me, and stand at the foot of the grave where I imagine dad’s feet would be. What is left of them? — rotting away in his favorite slippers. What is left of his body? — once embalmed for the world to see.
We stand there as if there were some secret code that you receive once someone you love has, dare I say it, coded. “Clever,” I think to myself. And we are not well prepared. Just dressed in one-layered coats with hands roughly shoved to the bottom of our pockets, as if that will protect them from the wind. Swirling in and out of our bodies, swatting across our faces — it is going to find them.
Looking up, looking out, looking down on, well, on snow. Plain. White. Snow. Or is that the grave? Ah yes, hush hush. Serious now. We are at my father’s resting place.
A headstone has yet to be placed because, like so much of death, it is not poetic, it is logistics. And logistically the ground is too frozen for a headstone to be hammered in. And logistically, the ground is not sacred, or even special, really. It is purchased. Selected especially just for you!
“That’s right folks! Chosen specifically from a cemetery map, this plot of earth is all organic, non-GMO, and tended to year-round. And don’t worry about your friends, they can come visit you and your neighbors whenever in this all-inclusive gated community. But wait, there’s more! This bargain isn’t for one gravesite, but two gravesites! You heard right! No more having to worry about bed hogs or blanket thieves - side by side for all eternity! This showcase can be yours if the price is right!” Cheering. Whoops and hollers. Numbers being shouted in my head. 57! No, 58! Closest without going over. 57! 57. 57 it is. Today he would have been 58.
I stare at the mound of lifeless snow. Side by side, my husband, my brother, my mother and me.
And then mom breaks formation. She scurries her short legs over to the grave and starts to claw at the snow white ice, where peeking through is blue and yellow of the casket’s spray. We stand there, my husband, my brother and me, watching as she claws and she picks and she primps the spray, my mother — a widow now — tidying her husband’s grave.
All the while I can feel myself consciously fighting my own feelings. I can feel myself telling my mind to feel more, to take advantage of being in this symbolic place, to “Cry goddammit. Cry already!” But I stand there, between my brother and my husband, and looking down on my mother caring for my father in the only way she can — still fixing that somehow still-colored spray — I cannot help but chuckle. And I know it is because if I really let myself feel, I will not hear the sound of a giggle, I probably will not hear anything at all. If I really let myself feel it will start in my eyes (they will be a bit moistened) and then my stomach will tighten. My abs will constrict as if preparing to protect, and then my lips — they press tightly shut, as if saying, “We will not break. Not over your dead dad’s body.” My nose crinkles up. My face looks like I am trying to be so strong but by now a tear is certain to have fallen to my cheek. My forehead furrows. My lips, to their dismay, release. My eyebrows raise, trying to pull the wetness back in — not giving up quite yet. When at just this moment my chest lets go, and like I am being smacked in the back of my head, a big breath escapes me. So I try to stop breathing. It is pertinent now more than ever because at this moment, though silent, the sandbags holding each part of my body under control — my breath, my chest, my stomach, my chords, my muscles — this very embankment might explode. And it is now that I have to decide if I am going to let them go. Decide if I am going to let my body have a release — have a break for a change, not be so tight, not be so controlled. I am standing at the foot of my dead dad’s grave, and so I decide to give my body a break. I let my body go.
It is the silent dance of constricted breath and a contorted face, until the barracks break, and the wind carries my deep wailing away.