The only familiar name in a slightly outdated "White Pages" book was that of a woman I remembered was his mother's sister. After seven rings a quavering but alert voice answered my call. She repeated my father's name as well as mine, conveying no sense of hesitation or doubt about who she was speaking with. Informing her about Dad, she offered her own news immediately after that of her condolences. The man I sought, her nephew Vincent, was still in New York, but his father, mother and wife had all died within the last two years.
Well, we reconnected at the wake and soon began our new tradition: journeying to the place where our fathers are buried: the National cemetery less than 100 minutes from our respective homes. A navy man like his WWII veteran father (who had died one month before mine), my old pal had served in Vietnam. His wounds, I learned in time, were not visible ones.
Vincent's aunt's late husband had a long five year hitch in the army during the "Big One" like his brother-in-law and had worked with him and my Dad. And Vincent's wife served too, but "only"on the home front, caring for her ailing mother-in-law after raising two children. She succumbed to cancer between the occasions of her in-laws deaths and while but a "rookie" grandmother with her first little one too young to remember her. They are all sleeping at the edge of a beautiful section of long rows of white gravestones close to trees, a bench and no more than a scant couple of dozen yards from each other. My Dad is several minutes away in a newer section, a sun drenched field that recalls his love of the summer and our small garden. It seems larger than Vincent's family's section, with the trees younger and fewer. Dad's grave's centrality reminds me of his many hardworking years, the natural center of attention in a store pulsating with action, commerce and the many customers he served with unstinting attentiveness, humanity and humor.
There are six other graves that we visit. Returning from Dad's, a five minute stroll brings us to the one of my brother's friend, a fellow poet resting, like Vincent's people, on the edge of a section and like all of them, in sight of the occasional turkey, deer or even a mole. If civilian habits of our great Civil War were revived and modern federal regulations changed, one could picnic in these fields of stone, the serenity and pastoral ambience most conducive to relaxation, meditation, the sharing of bread and the enjoyment of good company. In any circumstance, as visitors we are always welcome; our loving hosts ever patient, obedient and sounding boards for our recollections, our fondest stories of mirth and of the idiosynchratic doings of each of them.
Next, there's my Uncle Angelo who served between the big mid-century wars: WWII and Korea, much of his Army hitch while stationed in that former colony of Japan and then soon to be most sullen land of interminable internecine agony and enmity. He too is on the very corner of a shaded section, a pleasing distance from the road with a bench also near his remains. Just beyond are many tall bushes affording privacy and comfort. Some of the many surrounding tombstones catch one's eye inevitably, as in all the sections…. young men, never to grow old, or taken in the fullness of their years like Dad. So many stories are there, forever untold to us, only hinted at by the birth and death years, the war in which they served, the rank, the medals awarded, and sometimes an epitaph, almost always too brief. After Angelo, we approach a section near the entrance/exit of the huge burial ground. Here are four graves. The parents of a girl that I was hopelessly smitten with nearly half a century ago rest near its northern border. I don't recall how I learned of these plots. The first year that Vincent and I traveled here, the mother was alive. Then she availed herself of the choice, as all spouses of veterans can and most do: to rest beside their beloved. I met the father once. He was kind,"old school" and like Dad and five of my uncles who served, a member of "The Greatest Generation". He was also not sure why I had introduced myself to him one day on his doorstep nearly thirty years ago. I quickly became unsure as well and stifled a strange anger while shaking his hand and mumbling my regards to him as well as his long married, long moved away daughter. I never troubled him again.
Last on our list are my godparents. Another Navy man, rather, a proud member of the Seabees was my convivial, stern, yet affectionate uncle, a bus driver with a booming voice that served him well after the war as a sergeant in the Army Reserves as well as on crowded public buses in New York city. His death marked the first family interment in this cemetery nearly a quarter century ago. The markers then were, and in that section remain, large brass rectangles nearly flush with the grass. I recall that my Uncle Damiano's first name was misspelled and uncorrected for a couple of years after first displayed. It was but a brief indignity for his proud shade; the wonderful happenstance (or did he view a brochure with a map bearing street signs of the new military graveyard?) of the lane running close by his tomb named for his boyhood hero Theodore Roosevelt still brings a smile to my lips when approaching his grave, knowing how proud this would (or does) make him. My aunt died ten years after her husband and they both made the very long journey from their home in Pennsylvania to this melancholy and tranquil spot, a place staked out because of my uncle's yearning to break free, despite his love of family, and to rest near his wartime buddies: a new family that he and his childless bride chose to keep close to their hearts, a tribe formed and nurtured when their marriage was young and a terrible war separated them soon after they exchanged their vows.
We never come empty handed. Vincent gathers his wife's favorite flowers from their backyard and whatever else is in season, always more than enough for each grave marker. Infrequently, I bring what I have from Dad's garden and we distribute them to adorn all eleven graves: small zinnias, marigolds, "snowballs" or hydrangeas, peace roses, colonial roses and others. Vincent supplies fronds of evergreens and holly in the Christmas season from the big trees near his driveway. One would like to stay much longer. The exigencies of time and distance are almost always pressing and our reveries and remembrances are predictably abbreviated. But again, they, our hosts, are there each time, welcoming and uncomplaining, never with a grievance or a hurt feeling for our absence or its length as we grieve each time, the depth of our feelings varying but our prayers and love never fading like the cut flowers or the sunlight of our winter trips. Once we lingered, caring not about traffic, life's necessary errands, irritants of bills, bureaucracy, worries of the timeliness of pending appointments, and countless other responsibilities of our often tedious days. Time did not seem to matter on this occasion and a dreamless sleep struck me as enchanting, while a calm collection of our thoughts was soon equally appealing and believed attainable. It will all end here someday, with or without a morbid viewpoint regarding the matter. It can be depressing or relieving, depending on one's frame of mind and/or inclination to be calculating or reflective. Vincent will, in fact, be interred here, joining his wife someday. It would be very wonderful, in an indescribable way, to be able to join Dad under his tombstone reading "Sa Benedic" (his greeting in Sicilian whenever he met his parents) and the terse "BSM" and "PH" for his most important awarded medals . But having never served, I must search for another resting place. What could be greater than a place to call home, one close to my parents? My epitaph may refer simply to my joy or sorrow, depending on the distance of my bones from theirs.
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