Pilgrimages of the miles versus the heart and soul

My best friend died 15 years ago this September. Her 47th birthday would have been last Sunday, which is perhaps why I was drawn to the Bethel Cemetery in Greenbank that afternoon.

I spent several lovely hours there with my family, passing among the peaceful dead, reading the inscriptions on their tombstones and trying to imagine the joys and sorrows that were their lives.

On Monday, I went to visit Judy’s grave for the first time since we had dug her ashes into the soil at the base of a great English Oak in Toronto’s Necropolis. I carry her with me always - her soft skin and her easy smile - in the wonderful memories we made in our 28 years together, but it was comforting to kneel down and brush my fingers across the plaque in the ground engraved with her name and dates. That little rectangle of marble is a perceptible reminder of her time here with us; a symbol of our love; a promise that we will never forget her; and a hope that strangers passing by might come to know her just a little.
I have always been drawn to cemeteries. I find their permanence comforting. The knowledge that people walked on this earth before I was born and will continue to walk on this earth long after I am gone makes life seem less insignificant, less transitory.

I once made the pilgrimage to the Irish Block cemetery outside of Owen Sound to find the resting place of my paternal grandmother’s family. They were indigent and buried far outside the city, hidden away shamefully in the corner of a farmer’s field. The cows watched disinterestedly while I discovered my roots.

When I found the tombstones inscribed with my grandmother’s maiden name, I felt a thrill of connectedness. These were my people! I had never met any of them, but they belonged to me. And I belonged to them. This was my family history and it humbled and moved me.
Driving home after visiting with Judy on Monday, I began to wonder if cemeteries - and in particular, markers, tombstones and monuments - invoke the same kind of response in other people and why the physical remains of our loved ones, and their final resting place, are so significant.

I asked Judy’s mom, Ann, now 86.

“I visit because I believe it’s a recognition of Judy’s life,” she told me. “I don’t feel her tree symbolizes a spiritual meeting but it’s the one tangible expression of all our memories and recognition of her uniqueness.

“When I go, it’s a pause in my daily memories, the peaceful setting bringing back so many ‘snapshots’, some hilarious - a recognition of the inexplicable in our lives.

“Sometimes, given the dignified quiet of the Necropolis, Toronto’s oldest and perhaps its loveliest cemetery, I wonder if Judy has simply not left for somewhere a little more in keeping with her merry soul. Other times, like yesterday under the leaves of her memorial English Oak when you, her oldest chum was there, my mind goes back to those other times when we were a little more innocent.”

Like Ann, my friend Pauline also lost a child. Her eldest son, Ryan, died of cancer when he was a teenager. Pauline had Ryan’s tombstone elaborately engraved with pictures of him playing soccer, snowboarding and graduating from Grade 8. It is a work of art and a fitting tribute to his youthful spirit.

“I feel Ryan is with me all the time, but the cemetery is a beautiful place in this world that is marked for him,” said Pauline, “for the person that he was. And it makes him seem not so far away.”

Her son, Steven, who was just 10 when his brother died, feels “it’s a place that I can remember him. It makes me think about him more when I’m standing there.”

The same is true for Ryan’s friends.

After 11 years, “they still visit,” Pauline said. “They seem to feel closer to him there. They leave angels and friendship bracelets hanging in the dwarf lilacs we planted and Pennies from Heaven. I like to see the things they leave behind.”

Jory Hewson, funeral director at Wagg Funeral Home in Port Perry, has helped countless people find ways to honour and remember their loved ones.

“A lot depends on a person’s beliefs,” he said. “Some people find they need a place to go, a place where the physical remains are. Other people feel that the spirit is no longer there so they don’t have as much of a connection to those places. But it is still important to place them somewhere, so there is a place to visit.”

And a place to research the family tree.

According to Ewald Bengel, caretaker at the Pine Grove Cemetery in Prince Albert, “baby boomers are very interested in genealogy. We have people coming from all over looking for relatives that might belong to them or who they know are buried there. Basically, a cemetery is a way of keeping a record of other generations.”

The trend now, said both Jory and Ewald, is cremation, sometimes with burial, sometimes without.

“Some people feel uncomfortable taking remains home,” said Jory. “Others are more than comfortable.”

Bobbie Drew, councillor for Ward 2, falls into the latter category. She lost her husband Richard two years ago.

“Rick was cremated and my son Brett made a beautiful wooden box for his ashes. He’s in the house with me. I don’t fancy putting him somewhere else and I don’t fancy sprinkling the ashes. I like him here.”

Bobbie also lost her grandson Evan, when he was just five and a half.

“There is a lovely stone with an inscription in the garden at my daughter’s house. Evan loved to be outside and working in the garden with his mom. It seemed appropriate to set up a garden for him. You get a warm feeling when you go to the house and see a well-tended garden and the stone, engraved with a picture of a sailboat he had drawn.”

But Bobbie also understands the important role that cemeteries play in marking a person’s passage. Her mother-in-law is buried in a local cemetery and she drops by often to say hello.

“My father-in-law died in England and his ashes were spread there, but we always felt badly that there was no marker for him,” said Bobbie. “We put his name on her stone. We felt we’d honoured both of them.

“Whether a person is on this earth for five years or 100 years, they have an impact. It’s nice to recognize that they were here.”

At one time, my own father wanted to be scattered on a loon’s nest beside Hwy. 7, on a lake where he and mom used to spend summers at their trailer. He watched the birds come back to the same nest year after year and with their haunting call, it somehow seemed appropriate.

I’m not sure what the loons would have thought, but I wasn’t keen on the idea. I felt he would be lost to our family forever.

Instead, I want his ashes to be buried at the beautiful Bethel Cemetery, with its panoramic views of rolling farm fields and the wind whistling through the corn.

“I don’t think I’ll enjoy the view much,” he says whenever I bring it up, but it’s really not about him. It’s about us, the ones who are left behind. And the generations yet to come.

Cemeteries provide “emotional or spiritual ties to the past,” said Ewald.

My own partner, Rob, who went with me to visit Judy, has never put much stock in cemeteries: “Prop me up in the corner of my favourite bar, toss me in the dumpster, it doesn’t matter.” But he found himself “talking to her through the place, just in case she was looking on. I wanted her to know.”

Graveyards and tombstones, he believes, “are markers for us to find our way through the things that we have a hard time understanding.

“Most people don’t understand how a person can just suddenly not be there. When somebody goes and their physical person is not here anymore, they need something physical to keep that person in their lives.”

Are we afraid of forgetting or being forgotten? Is a marker perhaps a two-way connection, a spiritual portal that keeps our world connected to the world beyond so we can reach through to them and they can reach through to us?

For weeks after Judy died, I dialed her phone number just to hear her voice on the answering machine. The way she said “Ciao” so casually at the end of her cheerful greeting made me believe we would meet again. Until then, I have the enduring gift of her memory and the truth of Colette’s words inscribed on the marker beneath that great oak:

It is the image in the mind that links us to our lost treasures.
But it is the loss that shapes the image,
gathers the flowers, weaves the garland.

Ciao, Judy. How could I ever forget?