I’m not a huge fan of cemetery visits.
I mean, probably most people aren’t, but while I see the value in the ritual of visiting a loved one who has passed and experiencing all of the emotional things that come with that, it’s not something in which I find a lot of comfort.
Going to the East Tennessee State Veterans Cemetery and visiting the niche that holds the urn that holds my dad’s remains has always felt odd to me, mainly because I can easily feel my dad everywhere in this world…except there. He’s not there. He’s around me, all the time. I don’t have to drive for 30 minutes each way to stand in front of that niche in order to have a silent conversation with my dad.
But I do.
Jim and I usually go for a visit on the day he passed (December 25), on Father’s Day, and on his birthday (October 9). I wasn’t going to go today: I have been sick for most of the past week and Jim’s out of town. But today I’m finally feeling more human and even though I’m finally feeling like doing a bunch of the things around the house and at work that I have had to avoid due to being a slug on the couch, I noticed what a pretty, sunny day it was out there. Perfect convertible weather. I decided that it would be a really nice drive out to the cemetery for a Happy Birthday visit and then right back.
First I had to grab a stone. Here’s a confession: I go a little “extra” on the stones we bring to leave on the niche cover when we visit my dad. Instead of finding a run-of-the-mill brown or gray stone outside on the ground somewhere, I go upstairs and get one out of the vase from the guest bathroom. Actually, it is more of a doorstop than a vase because years ago, I poured a huge bag of glass “stones” that originally came into my house as part of a craft project in there because I didn’t know what else to do with them. The vase weighs about five pounds.
When I’m retrieving glass stones for the cemetery, I simply pick the vase up off the floor and pour the two I need for Jim and me into my hand. I don’t choose any particular one; they’re a mess in there, very random shapes and sizes.
Today I only needed one, and you won’t believe what came out. It was a blue glass heart. I gasped a little bit and then smiled. I guess Dad beat me to the visit.
I cradled that glass heart in my hand for a minute, and then delivered it to my office and set it on my desk before pouring out another random glass stone–no specific shape to speak of this time–and then I left for the cemetery.
