Drawn by death's strange glory

Our family had a peculiar custom that occurred when we were visiting grandparents on weekends. My parents and myself, along with my grandmother, would often drive to Pleasant Hill Cemetery, and aimlessly cruise very slowly on the dirt paths that circumvented the headstones and burial plots. They (we?) would look at stones, see which families were keeping them up, and reminisce about dead (and living) friends, neighbors and relatives.

I was the fifth wheel on these excursions, just along for the ride and never giving it much thought until I was older. I would sit in the back seat and listen to these stories of people I mostly didn’t know, wishing I was playing ball or doing anything else. Eventually I didn’t go along on these trips, and unfortunately, all the other passengers in the car ended up at Pleasant Hill permanently.

It may have been guised at gossip or bonding or whatever, but often these discussions centered around what the deceased died from, or how they lived with such a long disease or horrible spouse. I guess it was somewhat petty gossip delivered in a somewhat macabre setting; a good deal of it was harmless recollections as well.

It was all very ethereal for a young boy to hear frequent discussions of death. And little did I know that death would pay a most unwelcome visit to our house in just a few years. But at the time of these car trips, I was always so relieved to get back to my grandmother’s yard, where there were no artificial flowers or freshly-dug graves.

It didn’t register with me for a long while that there was almost a preoccupation with death in my family – or an understanding that it was coming so you need to be prepared. It was freely talked about, which seems to be a contrast to today. But folks died earlier and seemingly more often back then too. Of course, religion and the promise of glory days ahead also played a part in that thinking. There was a special emphasis on buying burial plots, headstones and insurance early – one of the first pieces of advice my dad gave me after I got my first real job was to get some life insurance, “at least enough to bury you.”

I think about these things more and more these days. When I visit my hometown and Pleasant Hill these days, where most of my family now resides, I usually don’t linger. I don’t want to get too comfortable there and give anyone the idea that I’m ready for a much longer visit.

Not yet anyway.