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Last night Mom, Middle-Little, Farmsister, Farmkid, and I drove up to the military cemetery.
Dad doesn’t have a stone yet, he’s got a temporary marker. They’ve buried enough people since him that the row is full and they’ve started to fill half the row behind. The grass has filled in already– cremains only need such a small hole that it takes no time at all. We laughed to see the rest of the row filled in with shorter and shorter grass until it was bare dirt on the last one.
The stones, the service member gets the front, and their spouse gets the back. (This is a section that allows spouses to be buried with the service member; much of the cemetery is reserved for solo burials. This section also specifically is for cremains, and the stones are much closer together than the coffin burials sections. Specific sections for solo and dual burials, for cremains and coffins. There are also… columbariums? Not sure of the word, but vertical structures with a grid of niches and a stone faceplate that hold remains four high and like a dozen across. Mom did not want that, she wanted a stone, and looking at them we confirmed it– it’s such a cramped space that there can be only one epitaph even if there are two people in there, and there are no dates only years.
Though the crowded little columbarium is very snug, and we amused ourselves looking at the way the epitaphs line up. I took a photo where of the nine stones in the shot, five had epitaphs with some variant on “Forever Loved” or “Loved Forever”; another photo had two that said “Gone Fishing” and one that said “Going Fishing”.
My favorite epitaph said “I had to mosey,” on the stone of a man born 1927 who’d been buried in 2014. He must’ve been a beloved grandpa, with that kind of line, you just know it. My maternal grandmother used to end every visit with “Well I’d better mosey ‘long home now,” and so did I, when it was time for me to leave last night after supper. (We had Halloween-themed cupcakes, which I enjoyed but found an odd choice since Dad had been so hostile to always being stuck with Halloween-themed confections for his birthday. I am not going to look a Creepy Eyeball cupcake in the mouth tho, it was delicious.)
There was a guy buried a couple rows over from Dad who was born in 1985. That’s the year Farmsister was born, so we contemplated that in solemn dismay. Iraq veteran, died this year.
So we stood around Dad’s temporary marker, and Middle-Little poured each of us a shot of some fancy variant of Laphroaig in of course tiny metal shot glasses belonging to an elaborate travel drinking set. M-L owns ridiculous amounts of specialty alcohol-drinking memorabilia. I would’ve just passed around a flask because I am a savage. I’m glad she was in charge. She’d planned on coming by herself, but we all tagged along.
We stood in contemplation of the sunset, and I took the photo above. The camera on this phone I’m borrowing is not fantastic, but if you don’t zoom in it’s not a bad photo. There’s a bizarre electronic carillon that, every half-hour, plays like five minutes of a truly strange selection of songs, notably including the Marines song (the one about the shores of Tripoli) but not the songs of any of the other branches– Dad would be taking notes and would be Deeply Offended, he objected to the Marines on principle– but apart from that weirdness it’s nice. The groundskeepers are as strict as Dad always wanted to be when he was caretaker of the Catholic cemetery– artificial flowers are only allowed from October to May, no memorabilia, no solar-light displays, no gaudy extremes. Just flowers, and they’ll be periodically removed.
Actually the gate of the cemetery was extravagantly decorated with pumpkins, and Mom said it was because they don’t allow them to be placed at gravesides, so they removed all they found and placed them at the entryway instead, and it made for a truly spectacular and beautiful display. We saw several pumpkins by graves, and knew the groundskeepers would be by to move them soon.
Military cemeteries are very orderly.
And there’s federal funding, so they don’t fall into disrepair like church cemeteries. IDK, Mom comes up here a lot so far, but I don’t think I’ll hang out here much. I planted all those walnut trees, I hope some come up. I’d rather think of him there. (Your picture was not posted)
