Cemetery shopping

            And now I’m back on the train to Berlin (though I’m posting this two days later).  As far as funerals go, I suppose it was nice.  And, as always, there’s that bitterness with yourself at the wake (fun fact, in this part of Germany, it’s called a Leichenschmaus, which literally translates to “Festive Corpse Meal,” so make of that what you will) when you start having a good time seeing relatives you haven’t met in years and actually have kind of a nice evening when you know you’re supposed to be mourning a relative.

            The actual ceremony got to me more than I expected.  I suppose I should have seen that coming, given that this was my first funeral since Colin’s.  I know that, in the moment when my cousin thanked me for coming, right after the ceremony, I was more choked up than she was, which is a bit of a role reversal given that it was her Dad we just buried.  It’s not as if I broke down bawling – hell, I didn’t even do that at Colin’s funeral – but just the scope of his death, all deaths really, felt so much more tangible there during the ceremony.  Like that feeling you might get if you think you’re going to pass out.  You don’t ever pass out, but you kind of skate along the edge of consciousness for a few minutes.  And I don’t think my legs were ever going to give out on me, but I felt so heavy there for a few minutes.

            When it was my turn to throw petals on the grave, I told Colin to look after my uncle.  Indeed, I told them all to look after each other.  It’s a big family grave.  I know of at least 10 relatives buried there, including my grandparents and my great-grandparents.  I didn’t meet any of them, but I also have a great-aunt buried in the grave and I can see her and Colin having a good time together.

            It just bought a lot of memories back, which I suppose is the point of the experience.  In some ways that was good, in some ways that was bad.

            But there was one thing I wasn’t ready for.

            Now, to put this into perspective, you have to understand that Christina does about 99% of the care for Colin’s grave.  I still surprise myself at how rarely I go by the grave.  I really did think I’d be there all the time.  Then again, I didn’t think I’d be blogging about his death three years later, so you go with whatever works for you.  But when we do go together and Christina tries to get me to help with the care, there is a resentment on my part.  Not that she’s asking me to help, but that the universe has left me not with a son, but a grave to tend.  Picking flowers and pulling weeds at a mound of dirt covering my child’s ashes is no substitute at all for having an actual 9-year-old.  So, I do try to get out of grave maintenance whenever I can, which does no one any good, but feels like my little rebellion against the universe.

            And then, yesterday, I’m walking through this cemetery near the Dutch border on my own – I had about 20 minutes to myself in the cemetery before the service started – I found myself taking time to look at all the other graves I ran across while I was looking for the family plot.  Part of it is astonishment at the number of graves for people who died in 2020, another fine reminder of the pandemic.  But what shocked me most was that I was taking notes about the graves.  You know, for ideas on how to pep up Colin’s grave.

            No one warns you about this, but if you’re in charge of a grave you seem to be in a never-ending fight to keep it looking halfway tended.  Maybe not if you have a US-style grave, which is usually just a headstone in a yard so far as I know.  But in Germany, they’re often like little gardens and, I will admit, there’s almost a sense of resentment towards the families that manage to have expertly trimmed hedges and intricate arrangements.  Christina is doing her best with Colin’s grave, but first off, she has an uncooperative husband and second, I think we’re still struggling with a concept.  You want to try to arrange it in terms of what Colin would have liked, but he was 5 when he died and landscaping was never one of his keen interests, so far as I know.

            So, there I am, getting ready to send my uncle off, and I’m taking notes.  Like, “ooh, that’s cool what they did with the shrubs” and “I wonder if we could plant flowers in that arrangement.”  Effectively, I’m trying to borrow others’ intellectual property and export it to Berlin so my son’s grave will be one of the nicest.  It’s like visiting a cemetery has become a kind of shopping adventure.

            There are worse hobbies.  There are far better ones too, but there are worse one.

            I don’t know if any of this will translate into change at Colin’s grave.  I don’t know if Christina will like the idea I saw in Nordhorn, the image I attached to this post.  I don’t know if I’ll change my ways and get more proactive at the grave.  I do know I recently trimmed our hedges and, having never done that before, had no particularly high hopes about how they would turn out.  But they look kind of OK – definitely better than before – so maybe there is room to be a better grave Dad.  We shall see.