Cemeteries are interesting places, right?
When discovering the earliest signs of human fossils, evolutionary archaeologists and anthropologists will look for evidence of burial rituals to determine the level of “organized culture or society” within the group. Ritual as opposed to simple burial, btw—it’s a big difference.
There is consensus among scientists that the earliest known evidence of ritualized burial (ie—intentional burial of multiple individuals in a specific place with some forms of ritualized “objects” like artwork and/or relics) occurred approximately 100,000 years ago in a cave in Israel (which was excavated and studied back in the 1960’s). Similarly, human bones dating back to approximately 78,000 years ago, of an early human infant, were found in Africa in 2013 with clear evidence that the burial was intentional (thus leading archeologists to surmise early hominids grieved their dead and sought to “solemnize” the event in ways that were beyond mere burial, which likely was meant to simply keep bones from being scavenged and scattered by animals).
Recent excavations in South Africa have unearthed tantalizing evidence that is still being studied and debated in the scientific community that may prove (once scientific consensus is reached through much peer-review and fact-based interpretation and analysis of evidence) a pre-homo sapien hominid species may also have intentionally (eg ritually) buried their dead as far as 250,000 years ago.
Fascinating. Made doubly so because we continue the practice into this current day.
Hence the intentional carving out—from a non-renewable resource, i.e. land—of space to bury our dead and mark their burial site with impermanent stone and marble. As their lives were impermanent, so too the stone we use to mark their ending. Though we intend the stone to be forever, to forever carry forward the memory of the one so delineated, it is not. The only thing stone will outlast, we hope, is us and our immediate descendants—at least for a few generations (those only with whom memory stands a chance of surviving). Nothing is permanent, not stone, not memory—wanting to believe it so is the cause of much (some think, as I think, all) suffering.
Still, we consider these places, these sites of marked death, as sacred.
And even though, if you will remember, I’m the guy who will forever visit Arlington National Cemetery as my first stop whenever I’m in Washington DC, and spend the better part of an entire day there, I’m no longer sure how I feel about that—how I feel about cemeteries being THE holy place of remembrance.
Well, of course they’re not. Because now I’m coming to believe, no, wait, not believe. Not believe at all.
I’m coming to understand, to know, that any place where memory and remembrance occurred and were created can be, and should be, a sacred place. THOSE places were places of the living—where the Soul of a person (or even pet) was animated and made manifest through a body we could touch, and hold, and hug—and even take care of 24/7 when dementia demanded the need for close care and service and nurturing.
We are still in our year of firsts
Eighty-five years ago today, Wally Lenseigne was born in Yakima WA to Ida and Victor Lenseigne.
Today is the first September 12 without Dad among us, physically. I sent no card, dialed no phone number, visited no home or “jail” (quickly, let us not forget THAT term was the term Dad used to describe the “second to last” assisted-living home that he inhabited—a place, according to him at least, that was actually the closest he ever got to jail himself. He knew better than to call his last assisted-living facility, aka my home, a “jail.”)
No special dinners were prepared, certainly no reservations made to SeaGalley, and no birthday cakes or cupcakes or cookies were made. No candles blown out***.
Every day I still remember Dad. Of course I do. And some of those memories surprise me—for example, at Cassidy’s wedding, as I shared with family the story of Dad’s cornhole board gift to the newlywed couple, my brothers and I remembered Dad’s love of horseshoes. THAT was a memory we hadn’t recalled until that singular moment at the wedding reception. Dad loved horseshoes and enjoyed teaching us the game (which, admittedly, was not the most complex game in the world to teach). I can see him, still, intently focused as he aimed then threw the iron. He took horseshoes seriously whether playing against my uncles, Clary, Trevor, or me. And mom too. I remember SHE had game as well. But Dad REALLY had game. He was good at it.
As the months and seasons turn, and as I look through my iPhone’s photo app, and look at, again, the many pictures taken during Dad’s final year, I remember “what we were doing this time last year,” he and I, as we lived what we didn’t at the time know was his final year.
And even now, though it’s becoming more rare, I still wake up at times, late at night, or very early in the morning, thinking I’ve heard Dad’s voice calling for me to take him to the bathroom.
Bittersweet that.
Since Dad died, I haven’t seen a single Let’s Make a Deal or The Price is Right episode (sorry Bob Baker, and may you, too, RIP.) But we still make homemade pizza, and vegan whole wheat muffins, and lattes. And I still drive a red Ford F150 pickup with a rusty hitch ball. And I have bought and spread more compost in a landscape that he walked, gingerly and with a walker, to get some exercise while also pointing out to me weeds that “you should pull.” And we swam in the pool during our 90 degree summer days—with the float toy he relied upon resting on the concrete off to the side of the pool.
We still call the bedroom he slept in, Dad’s room. And when we are downstairs watching the rare TV show, one of us, and always Sammy, still sits in Dad’s leather recliner. And I still catch myself saying “Like Dad would say…or do…or want.”
And…and…and….
As the memories of his final year with us continue to grow in poignancy and beauty, so too are the remembrances that surface as we recall the shared moments, moments that at least we can recall, from our shared lives together. My brothers and I will forever have this special and unique bond from this point on, with our own future and shared lives that lay ahead of us: the bond forged by the memories we keep of the most important man in our lives born 85 years ago, today; memories and stories told of the man who started each of us on our own ways.
That’s Alchemy of a Journey of the most powerful kind!
BTW: Because Dad still had monies remaining in a bank account we are keeping open until we are sure no other debt will be incurred by his estate, Dad continued his generous ways—“he” bought (okay, I bought on his behalf) three tickets to an upcoming Mariner game for his three sons. One of the last and fondest memories we created with Dad was to take him to a Mariner game last summer. Trevor, Clary, and I will “close the loop of memory” by attending an upcoming game between the M’s (YAY!!!) and the Astros (BOOO!!!!). Dad’s kindness and generosity continue to this day—I’m choosing to believe he approves and is smiling. He’ll be with us in our hearts as we root, root, root for the home team (“If they don’t win it’s a shame!”).
Thanks Dad! We love you!
Like, don’t like
So, I have a like/don’t like relationship with cemeteries.
Cemeteries denote “death days,” not really birth days. We typically don’t place markers in the spots of our birth (save for a chosen few: “Abe Lincoln was born here…etc.”). And that is interesting when you ponder it further. We want, and believe we have a need, to forever remember our dead so we ritualize, still, their death and set aside special places to place their remains—even though “they” are not there. And can never be there.
But there is a deeper Truth, right? If you read between the lines of every line and paragraph I write in this blog, over the course of each of the 109 entries, the deeper Truth is emergent in the exploration of the alchemy that is a lived human life; that is the temporal and temporary human journey of an eternal Spiritual being, aka Soul.
Such is the epitaph that should be written on every tombstone, or inscribed in every ancestral heart:
Do not stand
By my grave, and weep.
I am not there,
I do not sleep—
I am the thousand winds that blow
I am the diamond glints in snow
I am the sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle, autumn rain.
As you awake with morning’s hush,
I am the swift, up-flinging rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight,
I am the day transcending night.
Do not stand
By my grave, and cry—
I am not there,
I did not die.
— Clare Harner, December 1934Trevor, Kendra, Kristin, and I, last week, had occasion to stop by and visit mom and dad in Moxee at the Holy Rosary Cemetery. Only we didn’t. Yes, we were there, and stood for a silent few moments at their shared grave, but they weren’t. They weren’t there. They can’t be there. A grave is too humble a place to forever house a Soul. Said a better way, the Soul is too grand and beautiful and holy a thing to forever be relegated and contained in a three foot by three foot plot of clay and dirt.
Which is why I can visit with mom and dad wherever I am, even as I live my days 150+ miles away in Lake Stevens. Because I carry them in my heart with me. So, when I feel a thousand winds, see diamond glints on snow or the sun on crops of grain (no, HOPS!), hear the gentle rains of autumn quench the thirst of cedar and robins, or on occasion pause at dusk or dawn to bear witness to days transcending nights transcending days, I can check in with mom and dad, if I want, whenever I want. As these days pass in our “year of firsts” without dad, and we remember various things we did with him during his final stay with us (a baseball game, spreading compost, not polishing rusty hitch balls on red Ford F150 pickups, or Super Bowl parties with family), we remember. We remember a life lived, and lived well. We remember more the life with each passing day, and less the death. This is as nature intended. And likely why, as years lead on to years, we stop visiting cemeteries, at least as much (it has been close to five decades since I “visited” grandma Mitzel’s gravesite in Calvary cemetery in Yakima—but I remembered her a LOT while we were excavating memories this past spring when we were preparing for Dad’s funeral).
Our loved ones aren’t found in cemeteries, silly us for thinking so. When we want to “see” them, when we want to be in relationship with mom or dad or sis or Terry or Darwin or Huck or Ryan, or any loved one who has passed through death’s vail, we need only take a 12 inch journey to peer into the only place through which they still live—the one place given us, by them, as their lasting legacy:
our warm, broken-opened, and healing hearts.
The place, as well, where love is formed and felt and kept.
Incidentally, when we were at the cemetery, I noticed again the mysterious pull to roam among the stones of “the rest of the place.” We had also come from a different cemetery earlier in the day (last Saturday was a poignant day of remembrance for us, and for our sister Lori and her family—our new family) and the same pull happened there. For me, it happens in every cemetery I’ve visited, as I’ve notice upon reflection.
Who else “is here?” When did they die? How long did they live (btw, there are A LOT of memorials dedicated to tiny lives who died at birth!). Who is buried with them or next to them or who is waiting to be buried with them at some, for them likely, all too soon date? And most mysteriously, the thing that cannot be read, among all the other information that can be gleaned from a headstone:
What was their story?
I think that’s why we roam among others who “are there” when we visit the resting places of our loved ones’ remains in cemeteries. We are story-telling and story-reading (or listening) creatures. And if we aren’t able to read a story for whatever reason, we tend to make one up from whatever shards of broken memory that can be gleaned. More for ourselves to help satisfy the void of human curiosity, then for anyone or anything else. And most times, we know, those stories of historical fiction we make up, to answer only our arrogant questions, are never the person’s true story. To know THAT would take having that person sit us down for a spell to be mesmerized by another’s telling of their humanity.
But yet, and still, we can wonder. So at every headstone I now roam to, when I’m caught in the spell of mystery and curiosity, the best prayer I know, to pray at each stop, while looking at the stone left there to provoke remembrance, is:
“Who were YOU, you who are no longer here to tell us? How were you when you were in your temporal body? What were you like when you were a human, simply being?”
After all, it is THAT person who prompted so much love that ancestors thought it important to place a stone in one of life’s sacred spaces, to remember you by.
We always leave cemeteries with those prayers unanswered. Like most prayers, likely, until we learn to read more deeply into them. Until we learn to read between the few lines written there in stone—which we’ll never be able to accomplish; the complete stories forever gone, even to those who believe they carry memory forward.
Their stories are not unlike our own, differing only in all the minor, not major, details. So with every question of wonder when pondering another, whether we are standing next to their headstone or just said goodbye to them on their way to the store, we’re also pondering ourselves. And as we ask those questions of them, may we never stop asking for ourselves—and searching for our own answers.
Not a bad way to pray, that.
Okay, for all this talk, this internal ambivalence of mine regarding places in this world that held meaning for me in a past time of life, cemeteries, know that I still regard them with deep reverence. After all, humans did something remarkable there, in each. Something that began perhaps as far back as 250,000 years ago. Humans decided that life was so precious that it was important to mark death, too, as precious.
We have cemeteries because life exists, and we know life is such the sacred mystery that we have a hard-to-define need to solemnize and ritualize death, to our core. It’s apparently become a part of our DNA; DNA that we have in common with species evolutionarily close to us. Because the dead loved one’s life meant something—so much that a void was created upon their death. And voids need to be filled—nature, as you may have heard, abhors vacuums. And we don’t ever want to forget. So to hold on to them, when we can no longer hold them, we create something we can touch by marking their death as close as we can get to the the place where we last kept and held and placed what remained of them. So we can run our fingers across their names and dates on their marbled tombstone—and place flowers as we bear their witness, through memory, yet again.
I see the coming day, not all that far in the future, where we transcend the need for cemeteries (we will, afterall, eventually run out of space), and instead hold the entire earth in reverence. Earth: the one, humble and only place, that we know of right now, where all of life and all of death has ever taken place. If there EVER was a sacred place, it’s been spinning and orbiting silently beneath us our whole time, as we’ve been gravitationally glued to it since our beginning. Exactly as we will continue to be all the way to our ends.
When I die, wherever you are, whenever you are, look for me there, please, in all the places of this sacred earth. I’ll be there with Dad—maybe even having a catch or two. We’ll be those two glinting crystals of snow next to each other looking like we are having the time of our lives.
We likely will be.
And we’ll save a catch for you too.
Okay, once a Catholic…, JUST in case, covering all my bases, being the good first baseman and cleanup hitter I was…
A Blessing on Passing a Graveyard
May perpetual light shine upon
The faces of all who rest here.
May the lives they lived
Unfold further in spirit.
May all their past trvails
Find ease in the kindness of clay.
May the remembering earth
Mind every memory they brought.
May the rains from the heavens
Fall gently upon them.
May the wildflowers and grasses
Whisper their wishes into light.
May we reverence the village of presence
In the stillness of this silent field.
~ John O’DonohueHappy Birthday Dad!
We Love You, always. And today, on September 12, we celebrate your life—just like we will always do every September 12 from here on out, no matter where we’ll be.
(And Go Mariners!)
This will be the only post this week. I’ll blog at ya again on Friday, September 22nd.
Always and Ubuntu,
~ kert
🙏🏼
***There actually was a candle blown out—or will be. To mark this important day of remembrance, during my meditation practice sesshin today, on the alter in my zendo, I will light the candle that was lit, and that we kept burning in the room, as we, Trevor and I, ritualized the washing of my Dad’s body for the last time following his death.
Oh, and for dessert tonight, there will be frozen strawberry oatmilk dessert alternative!
There simply can’t not be.
Hi cousin, I am actually taking my dad (Paul) out to Reggie Brulotte’s today so he can see the hop picking. As I am reading your post about your dad. A hop truck drove by me with the smell of fresh cut hops, you know the smell. I just think it was a hi from your dad. Really touching moment. Thank you for sharing your journey& memories .
How can I send a photo to you on this app?