Hibiscus Row

This is a special place, my son said to me. I told him I agree. It is a beautiful and secluded cemetery. An ample place of sepulture, they said when it was consecrated. And it has become all the more glorious with age. I wonder if the architect who planned it all out knew how beautiful it would be when the trees matured over 160 years or so. I wonder if he saw it then, with the hundreds of small saplings he buried. I wonder if he could see what others could not in an age of cholera and uncertainty. They say that is what makes people brilliant, when they can see what others cannot.

The trees were planted methodically along the carefully plotted alleyways that are newly paved and perfect asphalt. Across gentle rolling hills that were once pasture. A farmer owned the land and willed it to his eccentric daughter, who later donated it to the city in 1849, the year of a terrible cholera outbreak. No one was immune to the disease that spread rampant and bodies overfilled the churchyards, crowded marketplaces, and polluted the water supply. Every one of those deaths, remembered now only as a statistic in an epidemic in a dusty history book or on a plaque, were meaningful to someone. 

It is as though the trees host the mourners, comforting them in some natural way, offering privacy and shade. To bring peace to death as ambassadors of the 19th century romanticized theory of life being seasonal, and death simply a necessary occurrence in a cyclical rebirth. Like something from a Walt Whitman poem. I wish I could think of it that way. But all I do is get sad.

I sometimes sit on a picnic and wonder of all that these old trees have seen. All them processions that have passed under them.  I wonder about the various ways the buried died, whether it was tragic or expected, murder or disease. Unnatural or natural causes. Processions of celebrities with large crowds, and common folk with small ones. Did anyone have no one? It makes me sad to think. So I clean and weed around the most neglected and modest graves more than I do the fancy ones. It is as though the trees carry all that woe in their sloped, aged backs. And somewhere, way up there where their heads are hiding atop twisted necks, they must have some pitiful-looking faces, old and furrowed as mine, with sad tear-rutted cheeks.

Their branches are like extended arms offering an embrace that is never had, but an embrace offered, nonetheless.  And in autumn, as it is now, it as though they mourn and their leaves change color and fall like tears. That slow and beautiful fall from all the way up that is as graceful as it is somber. Pirouetting like the final and tragic fall of a ballerina to the stage which is felt by the audience as she lays there in a crumple of herself until the curtain closes. I sit and watch and the thought is not lost on me, though I am old and sometimes I feel rather tired and thoughtless. I am very incapable of abstract thought so such is foreign to me and it is as though I am possessed with ideas and thoughts that are not my own. 

Most are white sycamores, some are oaks, but I don’t pretend to know them as well as an arborist would, or as well as perhaps I should after all these years in their company. My son, though, he could tell you. If he wasn’t so shy that he only speaks to me, he would tell you of all the variations and what the genus is that drops the green balls we clear from the old graves near the East Mausoleum where they put the Jews. Chestnuts, I think. Maybe horsechestnut. Or is it sweet gum? Or sugar maple? They are all old friends, though I don’t know their names.

In the beginning, I stood here where I stand now and fast-food wrappers tumbled across my feet from a nearby highway. All that separates this sacred place from that dirty and busy thoroughfare then and now is a row of thin trees and a ratty chainlink fence that is woefully insufficient. My son looked at me and I looked back at him. There is something terrible about a littered cemetery, like graffiti on a church. There were empty beer cans and paper sacks caught up in the azaleas by the Civil War veterans’ graves and their granite monument which was consecrated in 1876. And once I noticed the first, the cigarette butts seemed to multiply and desecrate this sacred ground, trespassing in blades of grass and clover like tiny paper tombstones to themselves.

We didn’t interrupt that funeral service to pick up those wrappers then. They just blew on by. But the next day we came back as volunteers to clean in honor of those who passed because it seems you should honor those who have died more so than we as humans do for each other. It is as though we forgot. There are no more glorious monuments, or hand-crafted headstones with gothic grim reapers holding hour-glasses, or angels and demons contesting a soul. Cemeteries these days are more of a nuisance to people and there are those that think we all should be reduced to a plastic box of ashes to make room for a housing development, or a golf course. I am of the opinion that once you stop paying proper respect to the dead, you can't respect the living. How many people speed by on that highway and think nothing of this cemetery or these lives. 

My son and I have been back for 53 years, every Saturday and holiday, and random weekdays when my day job gave me vacation time. I’ve spent every day of my vacation here. Walking about. Looking for trash and talking to those that time and life forgot. Now that I am retired, I am here every day. They don’t pay me, though all the groundskeepers know me and talk to me here and there. I have a key to the utility shed. I can mow if I want to, and have before until they hired a new guy or gal. I have outlasted several of them. Dozens have been fired or quit, or retired, or died over 53 years. They have all been cordial and say it is nice to see me when they do see me. Or Merry Christmas when it comes. Or goodbye when I leave. They say they appreciate the help and men like me are rare. I don’t feel rare, or special at all. I am just doing my part. A very small part. 

Sometimes, they bring fellows from prison to clean, but they don’t do so well. Some do, but most just sit in the shade, smoking cigarettes, and talking too loudly, not knowing the difference between a prison and a graveyard. They have no reverence, as though there is nothing beneath or above them. Sometimes there are Boy Scouts, or Girl Scouts, and they make me happy because they seem to bring life. My son particularly likes them. He likes to watch them play tag when they have their work done, or run up over the hills and hide and seek behind the old tombs and monuments that are colossal to a 7-year-old. He stands and silently watches them without saying a word. But though he is smiling, there is a indelible sadness in his expression. A lonely wistful kind of gaze.

Go on, I tell him. Go play. We worked enough today. But he just stands there and doesn’t respond. I pat him on the back and rub his head. I tell him I love him for the fiftieth time today and he says he loves me, too. The Scouts are leaving and the sound of their distant laughter and voices makes his ears perk up once more. But then they disappear over the ridge and he is still there with me. I know he is lonely sometimes. I know all he wants in the world is a friend and I guess I can’t be his dad and a friend, though I wish I could. He is my only friend. The only friend I want.

On a good day, we get six or seven bags. Lesser days we get three or four. Not only trash from the highway or from disrespectful visitors, but sticks from those ancient trees, sheets of sycamore molt, dead leaves, or branches that lay like dismembered arms and fingers. We take the bag to the dumpster and toss them in, which he enjoys most. He likes to watch me flip the hatch open and heave them and to hear the soft thud they make when the dumpster is empty. But I am 83 now and too old to toss garbage bags anymore. Even light ones. So I just leave them sit there for the groundskeepers on Monday.

We once rescued a raccoon from the dumpster. I don’t know how many years ago it has been now. Thirty. Forty, maybe. He was stuck in the bottom of the dumpster and could not scale up the metal walls. He was small. Not sure what they call a young raccoon, but he was more than a baby, but much less than an adult. So we built a ladder of trash bags to help him get out and the clever little fellow took to our design in an instant and scaled with great proficiency and plopped over the side and scurried away. It amused my son and me and we often talk about that raccoon with great satisfaction when something reminds us.

I tell him goodbye, see you tomorrow, and we part ways the way we have for 53 years. I go home and get the mail and there is a letter postmarked San Diego, California, U.S.A. I stare at it for a while before opening it. It says my wife has passed away and she wished to send me a letter upon her death, which is enclosed. It doesn’t say who forwarded it to me. It isn’t signed. I wonder if the person read it before they sent it, or if they didn’t even care to. They just owed her a favor. I put the letter in my pocket and didn’t read it. Maybe I will read it with my son tomorrow. I will have to tell him his mother died, but I don’t know how I will say something like that. 

An acre of wildflowers bloom on the south lawn, which may be the most beautiful part of the cemetery. There are twenty-seven different monuments, five mausoleums, and everyone who is buried here, despite their various statuses in life, are entirely equal and happy now. There is a Supreme Court justice, three governors, two senators, a world-renowned actress, a ballerina who danced on Broadway in the twenties, dozens of doctors, lawyers, scientists, over a dozen Civil War veterans, over 115 vets in all, a notorious spy, and an escaped slave who made it as far as Ohio to fall at the gates of his eternal freedom. There is only a simple marker for him, but simplicity certainly doesn’t besmirch the character of the deceased, nor does it tell a lesser tale. His name is Sampson and I spend a lot of time with him. 

Some days it rains, and some days it is clear and beautiful and the sunshine will break through the green leaves and descend like the light of heaven in a prism of stairs. The birds are pleasant and sing like I imagine the angels will, if I am so blessed. We are at peace here. There is something so tranquil about being here, I don’t ever expect to be able to describe it to anyone rightly, so I don’t even try. I am just here. Same as the trees. If there is a more perfect place, I don’t know it. Certainly, it is not San Diego.

We clean up in the fall and winter. In rain and snow. My son doesn’t ever complain, nor do I. It’s volunteer work. If I didn’t like it, I would go home. The cemetery association offered me a plaque a dozen years ago for so many years of service. But I declined it. Just as I declined their offer of pay.  The Dispatch did a story about me years ago, and I stopped cleaning long enough to have my picture took. I even smiled. They say when I pass they will give me a free plot, but I already have one. I remind them it is plot 61 on Hibiscus Row. I planted a red hibiscus bush between my plot and plot 60. It is a beautiful bush. The only thing lacking on my stone is the year it shall come. My name is there. My date of birth. And the simple inscription I requested, “Father.” They say they will erect a statue of me with my trash stick and a trash bag, wearing my Yankees hat. I told them not to forget about my son, if they do. It wasn’t just me. That’s right, they say. It wasn’t just you.

My son and I have a picnic every day after we clean. If it rains, there are shelter houses. If it is cold, there are mausoleums. I eat and he sits there looking at the trees, or the birds, and he smiles and tries to mimic the birds' whistle and laughs which makes me laugh. He doesn’t laugh as much as he giggles. He is a beautiful boy. I have a picture I show whenever someone stops to talk to me. Whenever he runs off and I can’t introduce him in person.

The traffic on the highway seems to have gotten louder over the past several years. I tell them they need to put up a better fence and they tell me that they are working on it. The company has to allocate funds and this and that. The board of trustees have to approve it. I said to hell with it and bought the lumber myself, loaded it up in my truck, and now here I am, 83-years-old, working on a 100-yard-long privacy fence. My son helps me level the posts and carry some of the wood from the truck, but mostly he just sits there and tells me about the people in the cemetery or something new that he knows. He knows more than I ever hoped to know. He is one of those brilliant types who can see things before they are. He told me how perfect the fence will be with gothic-style posts and hickory stain. I am someone who sees things only as they were.

The head groundskeeper begrudgingly tells me I need a permit for the fence due to a city ordnance and again that the board of trustees needs to approve it. But I keep on going. When they realize I am not going to stop, they must have said to hell with it, too, because two or three of their guys help me out by tearing down the old chainlink fence and putting up this new one. The head groundskeeper said the fence is very generous contribution, after all. He is half my age. He has a pretty wife that brings us lemonade and I make them laugh when I said thank you, but I wish they were beers.

You got a son, do you? Yeah, I tell him. He is here helping out. Couldn’t have done it without him. He’s shy. Probably went back to cleaning up trash. He shakes his head the way people do when they feel sorry for you because you’re old and they don’t expect you to live much longer. The way they do at the hospital or at the old folk’s home where I visit friends. When I come in and they have to tell me my friend has passed, as though “passed” is a better word for died. 

You married? he asks me. It’s a hot autumn day. Sweat drips into my eyes and they begin to sting. I pull my hat down to block the sun so I can see to nail the boards to the crossbeams. Old-fashioned hammer and nails. The bones of the fence are in place. The digging is done and the posts are all set in their concrete tombs. All that’s left is the easy work. Just a matter of putting a face on her. It’s sure a beautiful fence, he says, you a carpenter?

My wife left me because she said I cried too much and I made her sad. It was years ago. 51 years ago, if I am doing the math right. I don’t know exactly, anymore. I look around for my son. The cars pass indifferently down the highway a hundred feet away. The chainlink fence is gone and is rolled up in bundles to be picked up when they pull their truck around. The cars speed by and the wind they make blows things our way. Sometimes they get caught in a whirlwind for a while as though they are confused. I watch them paper sacks and cups blow and wonder where they’ll settle.  It’s sure a pretty fence. His wife said it would look nice with flowers along it. She offers to plant them in the spring and asks me what kind do I think would be nice and I tell her red hibiscuses. She smiles and says they are her favorite flower.

My wife sold what little bit of things she had and packed a few bags and bought a bus ticket to San Diego. There was no changing her mind then. I can’t say I blame her for leaving. I thought of leaving, too. But I had our son, and cleaning this cemetery with him every Saturday and holidays, and our picnics became too important to me to leave. I couldn’t just leave him. You understand, don’t you? Sure, the head groundskeeper says. I do.

I have outlived many of you, I tell him with a smile. There’ve been at least seven head groundskeepers, I remember. Two of them died. Three more quit or were fired. Two more retired. I got pretty friendly with them over the years. All the groundskeepers, really. Never knew a bad one. He smiles. He says something nice to me and I pretend I don’t hear him because in all my life I have never been comfortable when someone says something nice to me. Like putting on a wool suit. I stop hammering long enough to look for my son, but I don’t see him, so I go on in hopes to finish by dark and tell him goodbye before I leave. I hadn’t told him about his mother. I read her letter in my head. I have it memorized.

Dear Jim,
 
Not a day has passed that I have not thought of you. I stand and watch the waves come in and the sunrise and the sunset, up and down, and think how wonderful it would’ve been if you could’ve been here with me. Barefoot in this sand. Watching these waves. After all these years, I still think so. I expected you to come for a few years. One day, maybe when you got tired I thought a bus would pull up and there you’d be. It’s why I told you where I was going. Why I told my sister if you asked to give you my address in a not so conspicuous way. I thought you would come. I called probably a few dozen times, but you never answered and I never left a message. I thought maybe you’d come when you missed me enough to. I knew you wouldn't fly.
 
I never could rightly explain why I left all those years ago. 51 years this June 7. I left because I love you. And because you look just like him. Even now, I can’t write his name. I guess I didn’t know where one of you ended and the other one began. He has become “him” because I am too weak and sad to write his name because with a name comes a face and with a face a time in the bath, or a first word, or a supper, a birthday, or a bicycle ride.
 
Funerals are meant to bury the dead. To pass them on to eternal peace and to our Lord. They are meant for closure for those of us left behind to grieve and go on. And the only thing that should live on after them are the good memories. We had seven and a half good years with our son and there are many good memories for which I am forever grateful. I never moved on with anyone else, if that matters at all to you. Not one night. I suppose I died with him. And with you.
 
I know you go to the cemetery. Evelyn says you practically live there. She sent me the newspaper clipping. When I saw you and your smile, I cried. There was so much pain in it. These waves lap the shore like memories assail the mind. Then they go out again. But they always come back. The ebb and flow of nature and my regret. Funerals are meant to bury the dead, Jim. Please bury him. Let him go and find peace. I don’t know what is ahead for me, but I am sorry I left you. I wish I had stayed. And I am sorry you didn’t come to San Diego. A thousand of these letters I wrote and never sent. This is the last one, I am sure. Someone said to me that San Diego is Heaven on Earth. I hope to see you in either place in time. Please come.
 
Yours,
Ella



A Boy Scout troop came to help with the fence the next day. A lumber supplier gave us the rest of the lumber to finish it, at the request of the head groundskeeper’s wife. I was well short on supplies and wood stain and the head groundskeeper thought it would be a good idea to go 100 yards further while we were at it. I didn’t see my son for several days. I excused it to him being shy, but I knew he was probably watching us finish the fence from the grove of pines by the memorial garden. Or from behind a monument. Or on Hibiscus Row, where he sits Indian style sometimes. Or maybe he was off playing hide and seek, giggling with some of those boys. That is what I like to think. When I saw him again a few days later, I didn’t have the heart to tell him about his mother passing. We had our usual picnic and I said I loved him and would see him tomorrow. And he said he loves me, too. I can’t leave him alone.