By Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette:
THE FIRST BUT NOT THE LAST
Father’s Day is next Sunday. I’ve done the math, and this year I’m coming up one dad short.
But hey, that’s just the way it is.
All of us have suffered a loss of some kind, and as a result we’ve experienced that first year when each holiday seems especially poignant.
This spring, I’ve been swamped with commitments and obligations. That isn’t a bad thing, I’ve been offered some wonderful opportunities, but I’ve had to stay focused in order to accomplish what needed to be done.
So in my own little world, I hadn’t even contemplated Memorial Day and its personal significance – until the holiday weekend arrived. Time-wise, I didn’t feel like I could take a day off for a 300-mile round-trip to Pawnee Rock. Visiting my dad’s grave just wasn’t something I had factored into my schedule.
While I was growing up, Memorial Day had its own particular meaning for my family; it was a finish line of sorts. My dad was the caretaker of the Pawnee Rock cemetery and my family spent most of each and every May preparing the graveyard for the holiday.
Dad worked hard out there; it was his way of paying tribute to the dead, and he wanted to make the cemetery a pleasant place for visitors. Dad mowed, and my mom and my brother and I trimmed grass around the stones with hand clippers. My right hand and forearm cramped after hours of squeezing those clipper handles.
When Dad stopped his mower, we’d all take a break. Finding shade under a cedar, we took turns drinking from the gallon-sized jug of water. As the day got longer, the water got warmer.
And so this year, as I sat at home on that Monday morning, the first Memorial Day since my dad’s passing, those cemetery memories crowded out any hope for peace of mind.
At first I thought I could honor Dad’s memory at home. After all, he wasn’t at the cemetery – that was just a grave and a stone. But I soon realized that I had to go to Pawnee Rock. I needed to be at the cemetery for this first Memorial Day. So Dave and I got in the car and headed west.
“I stopped to see Grandma and Grandpa,” I told my dad, pressing two bouquets of plastic flowers into the soft dirt in front of his headstone. His parents are buried at the Mennonite Cemetery several miles away.
And I told him that I remembered all of the hours he and I had worked together on these grounds, every spring, every summer, keeping it up, year after year.
My dad’s grave is in the newer section, the part without any shade. The sun burned down on me and there was barely a breeze that afternoon.
Filled 10 months earlier, Dad’s grave had not yet grown over with the hardy buffalo grass that knots its way across the rest of the cemetery. I sat upon that buffalo grass that had been so familiar to me as a child. Cut close to the ground, the thin, curled blades seemed like peach fuzz covering the earth.
A half-mile north of town, the graveyard was always a quiet place, but on this day the air was abnormally still. A meadowlark sang. An owl “whoo-hooed.” A truck rumbled past on the county road.
Off to the east I noticed that the cedars along the fence had grown quite tall. Dad planted those trees when my brother and I were young. Dad hauled water to the cemetery in barrels and with buckets we watered each of the trees one summer, over and over.
Our history is here, Dad’s and mine. After my brother went off to college, it was just Dad and me working here, in the cooler air of the mornings and the evenings.
Sitting on the grass, I reached for a handful of dirt from Dad’s grave. It was dust, really, and a strong gust could lift a layer of it and scatter it with the wind. But the memories of my dad and this cemetery will never blow away; those memories are rooted in my brain just as fiercely as the buffalo grass is rooted in the Kansas soil.
Copyright 2012 ~ Cheryl Unruh
Beautiful tribute, Cheryl, thank you.
“Sitting on the grass, I reached for a handful of dirt from Dad’s grave. It was dust, really, and a strong gust could lift a layer of it and scatter it with the wind. But the memories of my dad and this cemetery will never blow away; those memories are rooted in my brain just as fiercely as the buffalo grass is rooted in the Kansas soil.”
Excellent close.
Oh, Cheryl, again, this really touched my heart. Thank you.
Thanks, Kelley, Roger and Ele.
Ele – thinking of your wonderful dad, too.
Thank you for sharing your special bond with your Daddy & you/ with us!! My Dad died June 1st 1991– & I had a special bond with my Dad– (my mother always said all my life- I was Walt’s kid -not hers!! :))I was Dad’s main care giver when he died of cancer– I have always had a place in my yard-where ever we lived- with his stone grinder & horse shoes– & his brand & a cream can– etc etc–that is my way of having a memorial to Daddy in my yard where ever I live– my connection I guess!! And a wild flower garden– for Dad!! Thanks for sharing Cheryl– unless you have had that “special bond” with your Dad– you can’t understand!!
Cheryl, I always love the way you put your words together. Again, I felt as though I was there with you. So glad you were able to spend that time back with your dad and all your fond memories!
I’m glad you went out there. This was a very touching writing Cheryl. I liked so much about it. I understood that Memorial day “was a finish line of sorts.” But that is so significant for all of us, we are all racing toward the finish line, holding back, but no matter.
Glad you went, glad you told us about it.
Cheryl,
Thanks for sharing your memories. You take many of us back to the time when we experienced going to the cemetary for the first memorial day after the passing of one or both of our parents. I remember talking to my mom the first few times I went back home. I don’t do that so much anymore, but I sure miss her like crazy.
This was such a moving tribute, Cheryl. Thank you for sharing it with us. My dad passed away 20 years ago, and at first, it worried me that I couldn’t remember the sound of his voice. But he used to sing to me when I was a kid. Some of the songs were funny and some serious. I can remember those songs clearly. So whenever I want to remember the sound of his voice, I remember his singing.
So I’m a little chocked up and this after reading it for the third time. I guess I’m due for a drive west too.
Very well done. I come from a small Mennonite community in south central Kansas. I can relate to you with helping your Dad with tasks outside. My dad died two years ago. Not a day since then has been ‘quite right.’ Thanks for sharing and putting into words how many of us feel about our Dads.
Cheryl, I too spent part of Memorial day weekend at our quaint little cemetery. I have a grand son, a brother in law and a son in law there. I placed a pondering bench on my grandson’s grave. When I get to poor me’s I go there and sit. I think of how this sweet baby never took a breath of sweet spring air or blast furnace August air. He never met his little sister or two little brothers. He never met me or his grandma. He was cheated out of skinned knees and elbows. Never got to meet his high school sweetheart or go fishing. Makes my problems look kinda like a booger. Puts a different kind of perspective on everything. I look at my little town and wonder where did it go. It is kinda still there and my memories or in my head but the then and now are so far apart. We moved to Pawnee Rock 50 years ago this October. I intend to finish my life there and they will lay me next to the grand son who never had a chance. I will tell him of my life in and around this piece of paradise. Dalton
Hi Cheryl. Talking to the young lady I work with recently, I told her that when our parents are gone, life is never the same. It’s been 18 years since my mom passed away, and yet not a day passes she isn’t in my thoughts. Life goes on, but it isn’t the same. In our own way we deal with the departures of our loved ones.
So eloquently penned, so touching to the heart. Very impressive, Cheryl and your words brought back memories of my loved ones too. Thank You!
You remind us how precious things are, even in death. I relate so much to this one, Cheryl! Especially those hand clippers – since my Dad’s whole life was tombstones and cemeteries. Getting ready for ‘Decoration Day’, as Daddy called it, was the biggest time of year for him and for us. So when his turn came back in 1988, (of course his own self-made tombstone had been ready and waiting), me and my 3 brothers got to re-live one last workday in the cemetery, installing our Dad’s stone next to his fresh grave. I think the five of us had to be proud, and strangely content that day, at putting the finishing touches on his 84 year old story. Back in the day, I too dreaded that bane of summer – ‘trimming around the monuments’ – both at the cemeteries and in my own front yard. But at some level, he must have sensed that he was building my hand, arm and wrist strength for my own destiny with stones. One last thing – Daddy must have intimately known every cemetery caretaker within a 6 county radius. Its too bad that he lived 2 states away from Kansas. I’m sure yours and mine would have been good friends.