My Sad Happy Place

March 2021

            The first time I saw a hydrangea, I started to rip it out of the ground, assuming it was like the weeds around it that I had just been instructed to pull out.  

“No, not that one”, my boss, Griffin, corrected, with a soft smile on his face.  “That’s a hydrangea.”

“Oh”, I responded awkwardly, quickly shoving the woody, flowerless thing back into the soil.  

            Now, since his promotion, Griffin is no longer just in charge of the cemetery’s horticulture.  He leads the procession of cars as we weave through the cemetery.  I’ve watched this so many times before, but it’s much different when you’re a part of it.  We park near our family plot, and all pile out of the cars.  I walk my dad to the gravesite, a hand on his back, as he drags his feet along with me.  

            We stop in front of the obelisk that’s adorned with his great grandfather’s name.  The same man whose portrait has been over the mantle in my parents’ living room my entire life.  He was some sort of legend – something about founding the State of Texas or handling all their financials, depending on who you ask.  I’ve been meaning to, but I still haven’t been to Texas.  Sometimes, I imagine he’s looking at me from the mantle with disapproval, like “Come on, Anna, I know there’s a whole world out there you want to explore, but make Texas a priority.”  

Our family is full of people who ventured off to find more than this town had to offer, and came running back once they realized we live in some version of paradise that only a certain subset of people can understand.  I’m one of them.  So are my parents, and my brother.  Then there’s a whole bunch of people standing around this plot of land today who are so far removed from this place that they probably would never have come here if there wasn’t a burial.  

I turn away for a moment and glance at the giant urn about thirty feet away from me.  Engraved with the name Johnson.  That’s where I stood in the pouring rain six weeks into the job – planting petunias - when I finally figured out where our family plot was.  I’d been here several times before, but headstones have a way of being lost in the tens of thousands more that exist in this place.  

            I move my hand off my dad’s back to take his hand, my mom on his other side.  I read the names on graves I’ve visited in years past, of people I was either too little or too nonexistent to know.  I’m selfish enough to think I’m a highlight of my father’s life these days, but how many people were important to him before I was even a figment of his imagination?  We step past the grave of his mother, who is the only other ancestor whose portrait adorns our walls.  Her death date reads the year before I was born, and her headstone is centered between the graves of the two husbands she outlived. 

            I help my dad take his seat.  Then, the chaplain welcomes everyone and begins the service.  It’s been eighteen years since I was standing here for a bad reason.  Since it was a sad place. I was so little then, that's but a distant memory. Otherwise, this cemetery, with the front gate located a quick jog from my house, has always been my park, my playground, a peaceful place.  My track team even used to do hill repeats in here.  

August 2013

I drive the Gator, weaving in between the graves, around the curves.  I sneak a pretzel as I drive.  

            First stop.  Section 1.  First urn that needs watering.  It’s a big one, filled with petunias, and all I can think about when I come to it is “This is where I got soaked in the rain and my boss sent me home.”  Then I continue to Ostreicher and Smith and Dann and before I know it I’m on to the “short sections”, two through six, because each literally has one or two things to water.  

            The day goes on.  Before I know it, it’s a new day and I finish the list in two days per usual.  I call my boss.  “What next?”  

            And then it’s on to part 2 of my life this summer: weeding.  And sure, sometimes it involves clipping ivy or mulching in front of the chapel or the smaller beds around the cemetery or grabbing a ladder and weeding a highly placed urn.  And occasionally, you gotta love pulling out pricker bushes and clipping thorn bushes.  And then there’s now.  Clip the day lily stalks.  Today is my last day of work before I go back to school 10 hours away for the fall semester. 

            Today is the last day of saying hi to Ben each morning.  Today is the last day of hearing Sunil, a Butanese immigrant, humming and singing and drumming in the back of Griffin’s pick up truck.  Today is the last day of hearing the familiar crunch of the timestamp as I clock in and out every day.  Today is the last day of heading over to the residence and ringing the doorbell at lunchtime to clean up.  Today is the last day of talking to Jay and the other guys. Today is the last day of losing watering cans out of the back of the gator.  

            Today is the last day... 

            Today is the last day of being a part of Woodlawn.  A part of the beauty that envelopes our city.  People see Buffalo and say, “Oh, it’s cold.  Snow.  Bad politicians.  It’s poor.  And by the way, your football team sucks.” 

            Well, all you pessimists out there, have you ever been to Woodlawn?  Have you been to any of the Olmsted Parks?  Because you’re obviously missing something.  And this coming from the girl who said, “The best part about Buffalo?  Canada.”  

     But, this summer I became a part of this cemetery.  Well, not in the same way as all the people buried here.  The people who were struck by a variety of tragedies, or maybe they just got old.  But, I was here hoping that somehow their memories could live on, as they rested in peace.  The turkey and the deer and the Canadian Geese flock the place, bringing beauty in addition to that of the endless geraniums, freshly cut grass and trees.  I watch a groundhog steal into his home.  The fawn plays with his parents, and a turkey lays her eggs in an urn.  I reach gingerly towards the geraniums, hoping she’ll just chill out while I clean them up.  As long as I don’t get too close to her.  Instead she suddenly shoots straight up into the air, a flurry of feathers, and I go running.  Not trying to lose a finger – or my head.  

            Nature is present everywhere, which is weird for a place bordered by Main Street and the Scajaqueda Highway.  But, inside?  The graves are tightly packed, and it reminds me a little bit of neighborhoods.  It’s weird to think how much less space you occupy after you’re gone.  My mom jokes we should build a condo on our family plot, and move in.  Housing prices are rapidly increasing around here, but I wouldn’t want to encroach on the territory of the dead, would you?  

            Today is the last day.  The last inquiries for directions come today.  People approach with their maps.  “Where’s Millard Fillmore?”  They ask, and I direct them towards Section F.  “It’s on the right.  There’s a big fence around it.  You can’t miss it.”  I say.  Someone else wants to know where Section 26 is.  He looks at the map and frowns.  “Isn’t it the other way?”  He asks.  I shake my head.  The maps upside down and I can’t explain it, but I just know where it is.  I typically have no sense of direction, but I understand this place.  Maybe eleven and a half forty hour weeks in a cemetery will do that to you, but I don’t even have to think anymore about where I’m going.  I just go.  This coming from a girl who still can’t find her way to the dry cleaners near campus (disclaimer it requires approximately one turn to get it right).  But, I guess I just have cemetery sonar or something.  

            The questions keep coming.  Is that a long tailed deer?  Yes.  Well, it appears to have a long tail... 

Where’s Rick James?  Section 10 by the Scajaqueda Creek.  The irony is not lost on me that I can tell people with my eyes closed where he’s buried, but I’m still not totally sure who he actually was.  I’ve never heard one of his songs.  Some days, as I see people approach, I try to guess who they’re here for.  Is It for Rick?  Good old Millard?  Their family?  Or just the garden/park-like feel of the resting place of our ancestors, that honestly makes a solid place to work out? 

Who designed the cemetery/ chapel?  I probably should know that... Let’s just pretend I didn’t bring that up... Where’s the exit?  Just follow the lines on the road in that direction.  Did you see a procession or do you know where the burial is?  Varied answers.  Where’s the Frank Lloyd Wright thing?  Where’s the grave of that boy with the marble monument?  Where’s the Flight 3407 Memorial?  Do you know your way around here?  Yeah, pretty much.  

            In Section 15, I weed and water the Blue Sky Mausoleum, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for Darwin Martin but not constructed until 2004.  Rumor has it, it costs a million to be buried there.  I guess Buffalo’s not such a stick in the mud after all?  

            I weed, dead head and water the geraniums surrounding the Blocher Memorial in Section 11.  It has to be one of my favorite things in the place.  Maybe it’s the marble?  Or just the big urns filled with flowers that are so pretty?  

As I mulch around Haddock, which is next to the Flight 3407 Memorial in 36 B, I think of the day that happened.  February 12, 2009.  I was 14 years old.  I was on Facebook before school, while I was eating breakfast.  Everyone was posting “Rest in Peace to the victims of Flight 3407.”  I told my parents a plane crashed here and they were so stunned they didn’t believe me.  Now the memorial in Woodlawn brings some peace to it, I think.  But, it will always be a tragedy fresh in our city’s minds, a blotch on our beauty.  

            Truthfully, in between requests for directions, (so the grand majority of the time), it’s just me alone with my thoughts and the music on my phone.  Me in the beating sun.  Me in the pouring rain.  Sometimes I arrive back at the garage at 3:59, almost late.  And sometimes I arrive back on time but soaking wet and absolutely disgusting, my long braid unraveling, dirt spotting my face. 

But, today is the last day.  Dave and Ben ask if I’ll be back next year.  I shrug.  I like it here.  I really do, but don’t I study hard at school so I can do something beyond working for a buck above minimum wage at a cemetery for the rest of my life?  

Woodlawn Cemetery is a place of history.  It captures the essence of this city, with its inclusion of nature, preservation of life and death and multitude of visitors.  For some, it is an athletic arena.  For some, it is a visit to loved ones who have been lost.  For others, today is goodbye.  For some of us, it’s almost home.  Just a job maybe.  Just a little while.  

But, Woodlawn has always been here, and it always will be.  Complete with the mausoleums, the wildlife, the flowers and the freshly cut grass, and the union guys who will retire with a pension at 65, and always make me laugh. Woodlawn might just be a place in the world, and you might look at me and say “It’s a cemetery!  That’s creepy.”  But, it’s one of my places, and for that I will always be grateful.  

I don’t go back to school with stories of the sweet internship I had.  Working as a gardener at a cemetery for the summer doesn’t come with glory or fame or even bragging rights.  Most people will just look at me like I have three heads when I tell them that was my first real job.  But, it did come with a killer tan, amazing memories and phenomenal wildlife spotting opportunities.  It's strange to say, blasphemy maybe, but this summer, the cemetery became my happy place.

March 2021

            I hold my dad’s hand tight throughout the service, trying to reconcile the grief of this moment – and so many others – with the great memories I associate with this place.  Trying to understand how a typically sad place became my happy place, and yet again, became my sad place. Flowers surround us – a memorial wreath, some calla lilies, roses and more. 

            These are different flowers than the ones I associate with this place.  Some people literally set up trusts to plant perennials or annuals in front of their graves and maintain them year after year until the money runs out.  Mostly geraniums and petunias, but others too – like the hydrangeas I once mistook for weeds.  Those are the flowers that I spent days watering, mulching, weeding, and cleaning up, all those years ago.  Those say that no longer how long you’ve been gone, we’re always going to be here for you.  Day after day.  Year after year.  

            These flowers around me are different; they say, “We love you.  We came here to see you.” 

Today, we say goodbye.  Even though many of us around the gravesite today have already said it, in one form or another, in the last few days.   

“Celebrate my life”, Aunt Irene said, as I stood to leave our visit.  

“We will.”  I responded.  “We love you.”  I said, the words feeling foreign on the tip of my tongue, not because they were untrue, but because we didn't talk like that with that side of the family. Then I walked out of the room and promptly spent the entire week planning to try to make it back to see her again next week.  But, she died before next week came.

The flowers around me are for beauty, but they’re really for us or for tradition – not for her. 

            Just over a week ago, my Aunt Irene gestured at the flowers my mom ordered for her and thanked us for them.  I felt guilty because I’d had nothing to do with their procurement.  But, they were beautiful.  I meant to take a picture of the flowers to show my mom the result of her order, but it got lost in the shuffle of the last visit to a dying old woman.  

I never knew the true matriarch of this family – my grandmother who stares down at me from her portrait every time I play the piano at my parent’s house, every time I walk down the back stairs, every time I answer the front door.  My Aunt Irene was the closest thing we ever had to that.  Maybe we weren’t super close, because the age difference was huge, the difference in geography large enough.  But, she was still incredibly important to this family.  My father’s only sister.  Now joining all the generations past, in this plot with her mother, father, stepdad, husband, and their parents and grandparents too.  

            As she asked us to celebrate her life after she was gone, she threw her hands up into the air, exclaiming, “Woohoo, I made it to ninety”.  Less than 72 hours later, she was dead.  We got there just in time.  Not everyone in the family did.  That’s heartbreaking in itself.  

            I hate it for her though – and for us.  To survive pretty much an entire pandemic and have to stay locked up in an assisted living facility, get your two jabs, and then die mere months later, before the rest of the world has had a chance to get back to normal?  Some may argue that she got 89 normal years before that, but it still seems unfair.  

            I used to ask people how old someone was when they lost someone they loved, like having 80 or 90 years would somehow validate their loss, make it okay.  But, lately, I’m realizing how shitty that is.  Like sure, if they died at 20 or 40, it would feel more sudden, more like the person was cheated out of so many years that they could have had.  But, simultaneously, the more time I spend with old people, the more I assume that they’re all going to be fine and dandy until they’re 115 – until they’re not.  

            After the service finishes, and Aunt Irene’s body has been lowered into the ground, a ceremonial shovel full of dirt placed on her casket, I rustle my dad’s hair and walk back to the car with him.  “I love you.  You know that?”  He nods and mutters "Sure" in his silent, “I don’t really have emotions”, old man kind of way.  But he lets me dote on him.

As we walk away from the crowd, he removes his mask, knocking his hearing aid out of place as he does.  The same thing happened last week in Aunt Irene’s room when he took his mask off so she could hear him better – the thing that’s supposed to save lives a somewhat obsolete construct when both parties are hearing impaired and vaccinated, and one is terminally ill already.  I press the aid it gently back into his ear and give him a quick hug. 

Then, I wait as he settles himself into the car, reach over him to buckle his seatbelt since he often struggles with it, and settle into the passenger seat beside my mother.  Finally, we leave for the restaurant where we will celebrate Aunt Irene's 90 years with the generations to come, and leave her to rest with the generations of the past.