Where Families Gather

Where Families Gather

By Arlene Levin  (c) 2019

The car trunk was packed with small green plants called "Live Forever" along with some brightly handled shovels.   My younger sister Phyliss and I got into the car.  Phyliss in the back seat, I got the front seat next to my grandmother.  We had a long drive ahead of us. It was Sunday.  The weather gave us longer and longer breaths of Spring.  The air was moist, the wind a gentle caress.  I remember it being a very long drive to the cemetery.  For me, the drive was a rare opportunity to sit in the front seat.  I sat up straight and devoured the view from this treasured perspective.  I rolled down the window and inhaled as we drove through 1950's Chicago.

Once a year, in the spring, we went to the cemetery.  Once a year in the spring we cleared family graves of the past winter's remains.  Sticks, leaves, the occasional dead flower blown across the vast expanse of stone funeral markers.   Today Jewish cemetery style is flat stones, just a little bump in the grass marks the grave.   The cemetery of my youth was in the old style. Tombstones of random size, height, color and texture created a garden of stone that stretched as far as a child's the eye could see.  That was the view from my family's graves.

Finally arriving, my grandmother parked the car along a black wrought-iron fence that ran along the dusty rarely used back lane at the far end of the cemetery.    We were at the nether reaches of the city.  A farmer's field began on the other side of the lane.   I lived in Chicago.  I lived in an apartment.   In my neighborhood there were parks and front gardens and lots of trees along the side streets. But, I rarely got out of the city past the sidewalks, crowded streets, traffic and the city's overwhelming frenetic energy. I looked across the back lane at the farmer's field and thought with a smile,  "I'm really in the country".

                                                                   

The iron gate was missing a hinge so it hung on a precarious angle.  Carefully we opened the gate.   It creaked a groan as we entered carrying plants and shovels and garbage bags to take away the waste.   Luckily our family grave site was very close.

  

My grandmother sighed as she opened the lockets on three grave stones.  About the size of your hand, each locket held a picture of her father, grandfather and uncle.  In life I never knew them, but I loved them all the same.  I thought, "They are my family.  Here is my history."

We cleaned and cleared the graves.  My grandmother always planted "Live Forever's".  I never knew why they were called that because each year we pulled out the dead "Live Forever's" to plant fresh ones.  We turned the soil with our shovels.  My hands sunk into the soft moist dirt.  I was delighted as this was the only time I planted anything in the ground.   For me, this sojourn was a unique and satisfying experience.  Seeing the freshly planted graves is a dear childhood memory. 

When the cleaning and planting was done, Phyliss and I would wander through the rows of tombstones.  Along the way we looked under other lockets to see who was there. We looked into their faces.  We looked into history. I once saw the tombstone of a women who was born before electricity and the telephone and lived to see a man on the moon.   Phyliss and I followed the tradition and placed a small pebble of recognition on the tombstone to record our visit.  

It was always difficult to find my great-grandmother Yetta.   I think another family member took care of her grave.  It always looked perfect.  My grandfather brought his mother to Chicago from The Ukraine when my mother was a child.  Bubby lived to be well over 100 so I knew her.  She only spoke Yiddish, I did not, but we understood each other.   I loved her.  The smile on her face and the warm way she hugged me said "I love you very much".

And then there was Lena.  She was a distant relative though definitely connected to our very large extended family.   Lena's wedding picture was in the locket on her tombstone. She wore a 1920's flapper style head-band and veil with a mass of dark curls framing her exquisite face.  The image captured a beautiful women who knew her whole life lay before her.  Not knowing the future, her eyes danced with unbridled anticipation. I learned the tragic truth, with her first child, Lena died in childbirth. 

Tall weeds covered Lena's grave. I felt an overwhelming sadness as I started to pull out the weeds.  My grandmother stopped me and with an even greater sadness said.  "It is not for us to do, Arlene" .  I never knew why but understood that "it was not for me to do".   I was a child of 10 years witnessing, but not understanding, family anger, conflict and abandonment.  Reluctantly, I closed Lena's locket and followed my grandmother to the car.  Each year I found Lena's grave, opened her locket and spent a few moments thinking about this family tragedy that happened so many years ago.  I continued to wonder why Lena's grave was covered with weeds and why I couldn't pull them out.  Family politics too complicated to explain was the only answer I was given. 

My sister Phyliss and I were the first grandchildren.   As we got older, it was the turn for younger grandchildren to spend a warm spring day with Grandma, clearing graves, planting Live Forevers, visiting the graves of other relatives, opening stranger's lockets and imagining who they were and what they did in their world so many years ago.

Maybe in their wanderings, my cousins found Lena's grave, opened her locket and wondered about her as I did.  Their experience would be little less dramatic.  At some point Lena's weeds disappeared and were replaced with a simple perennial garden.   I neither asked for nor received an explanation.  In my family it remains a "non-subject" with the truth buried in memories clouded by time.

Lena's daughter lived to a ripe old age and has since passed away.  Maybe she pulled the weeds on her mother's grave.  There is no one left who knows.   Today Lena's tombstone stands tall over a well kept grave.  In my minds eye I am at peace seeing this old family pain healed.  It was not for me to do, but it was finally done.