the family plot

Cousin Eric returned home the other day from a couple weeks spent with his family at the lake cabin in Idaho and sent me a few pictures. Not of the lake, or of the cabin, or of the particular relatives gathered there this summer, but rather of the family plot (such as it is) up the hill from the cabin, nestled under an apple tree overlooking the road, the barn, the cabin, the lake.

There's not much to say about the family plot. It consists pretty much of a piece of wood stuck in the ground beneath that apple tree, set in a wooden frame in which sometimes there are flowers (though usually there are not). At first, back in 1993, there was only the one name on this piece of wood. Six years later there were two, and now, as of last week, there are three.

I remember mostly snippets from the summer we buried my father in that funny little bit of land up on the hill, sixteen years ago.

I remember our Uncle Earle driving with us from Olympia to the lake cabin, which was pretty unusual then (though he has since taken on a bit of a patriarchal, almost a paternal, role within the family). Nathan and I fought each other across the whole state of Washington and on in to Idaho. It's a miracle of sorts that Earle ever spoke to us again.

I remember being pissed off because one of my father's old high school pals gave Nathan a Swiss Army knife with all the accoutrements but figured a girl wouldn't have much use for such a thing.

I remember the family gathering under that apple tree, the aunts and the uncles and the grandparents and the cousins and the three of us, my mother, my brother and me, shovels and box of ashes in hand.

I remember being that enraged 17-year-old self, running down the hill to the cabin, grabbing a mug of coffee and heading out on a long walk towards the end of the road. And I remember my cousin Eric, older and more wise in the ways of the world, intercepting me on the road, silently joining my isolated, fury-driven walk, eventually saying that sometimes life just really sucks.

That first plaque, the first of the family memorials, is looking pretty old these days, pretty weathered and worn. That once polished and sparkling piece of metal is darkening now around its edges. It lacks specifics (a full name, exact dates, a description of who this person was, of where he fit in to the world around him), and yet there is a certain beauty there, caught in its spartan simplicity. It is what it is: a name and two years inscribed in metal, that once shining metal now succumbing to verdigris and a heartbreakingly simple truth.

We've gotten a little bit better at this over the years, this family of mine. We've learned to soften the blow with decorative curlicues and full dates (July 19th, 1916 - Oct. 30th, 1999; October 15, 1917 - April 7, 2009) and even inscriptions of love (wife, mother, friend).

My father isn't alone anymore, up there on the hill under his apple tree. He has become again, as he always seemed to be, at the center of things, surrounded by people he loved, by people who loved him.


















(Thank you, Eric)