Comfort standards of the living don’t apply
to the dead, but we apply them anyway.
We know we don’t stay in our graves,
but we have firm ideas of who should be buried
next to us and who should not. We seek
shady gravesites for the heat of summer,
worry about bitter cold in winter, and push
away any thought of what actually
goes on inside the coffin.
Forty-three years later my stepmother died
in Florida with her dog and me at her side.
I walked the small cemetery a long time
and chose a gravesite under a tree.
Her neighbors asked what I thought
she should wear. We opened her closet.
Her slippers, sitting neatly side by side,
waited for her to step into them.
Empty slacks, tops, dresses, waited to be slipped
from their hangers. I passed them by
and chose the robe I’d given her
that Christmas. It was pink chenille. So soft.
My grandmother died a few days after Christmas. I remember her opening my gift of a soft nightgown and her comment that it was so soft she could be buried in it.
ReplyDeleteLovely. I loved that my father's grave has the ocean at his back, and faces the west for the afternoon sun, and to see the same range of hills he saw every day on the farm, as well as in his retirement. And as well as choosing his clothes, my mother insisted he be buried wearing his watch, as he always wore his watch. The idea of these things is 100% comfort for us, of course, not for them, as you pointed out. But that is still important.
ReplyDeleteMy husband's grandparents are buried on a hill overlooking the bay across the road from the house the lived in all their married lives. It is the sweetest cemetery. I like the idea of having that view in death, even though I also don't believe you hang out by your graveside.
ReplyDeleteLovely.
ReplyDelete