Getting
the Grandparents in the Ground
It
should have been a straightforward route to the cemetery, finally. But Grandma Peggy and Grandpa Tex had a
different path in mind. They wanted a trip
through the old neighborhood and a traffic jam and Waze obliged.
I
had been to the cemetery many times in my quest to get my grandparents ashes
interred. Each time I took the same route.
The 605 South to the 91 West, exit at Downey Road and take it down
straight nearly to what I call Sunnyside Cemetery, because that is what it was
called when I was a kid. But this day,
the day after so many years, so much consternation on the part of my mom and so
many weird push-me-pull-you unargued arguments and what-to-do-
with-the-ashes-conversations I was going to get them interred. They were on their way to their final resting
place. They just wanted to visit the
neighborhood one more time.
My
Grandmother, Peggy, died shortly after I got married. That was about 18 years ago. My Grandfather, known as Tex, lived for about
another five years. They had made no
plans for burial. They had only decided
to be cremated but made no specific requests for their ashes. I remember
something about scattering their ashes in the High Sierra’s – but maybe I’m
making that up. Both of their parents were buried in Sunnyside Cemetery in Long
Beach, but my Grandmother was unhappy with her mother’s burial, actually she
was unhappy with the cost of adding her mom’s name to the plaque that her
parent’s grave shared. Grandma Peggy
believed the addition of her mom’s name had been paid for at the time the plot
was purchased and she didn’t have the heart, or maybe the breath, to fight the
cemetery over the issue. Subsequently, my great-grandmother’s name had never
been added to her grave, until this year when I added it as part of the great
“get the grandparents in the ground” initiative of 2016. It would have been so much easier if they had
made the plans themselves but they didn’t. They left that to their wishy-washy
family.
Back
to Tex and Peggy… they married when my mom was about five years old. Both had previous
impetuous war-time marriages. My
grandfather had two boys that were being raised on the East Coast that he
didn’t get to see. He adored my mother, who had looks like Shirley Temple,
missed his own children, and was happy to be a father again. My grandmother was
happy to find a stable family- oriented man unlike my biological grandfather
who was a good-time Charlie in her book (he was a sweet wonderful man – they
were just ill-suited). So Tex and Peggy
had a great post-war marriage, a Southern California stucco box of a house and
one more child together that came five years later, my Uncle Blair. Blair was one of the cogs in the problem of
finding a place for the ashes. Blair was
a 50s kid. Red haired, sweet, and close
to his parents. He was the second
impediment to the wandering ashes. The first impediment was my grandfather’s
cheapness and then his attachment to my grandmother’s ashes. Everyone wanted the ashes near them, except
my mom and her Aunt Juanita who wanted them in the cemetery.
My
grandmother’s ashes first lived on my grandfather’s dresser. They sat in a
plain metal box, with a little doily on top. My grandpa would kiss his fingers
and then touch them to the box. He would talk to the box. He wasn’t ready to let them her go and so he wasn’t
ready to let her ashes go either.
When
Tex passed, his ashes were placed in a similar metal box with the one exception
of having a dollar bill taped to the top so we knew “who was who”. Now the
metal boxes sat on my Uncle Blair’s dresser. My mother was very upset about
this. She is the eldest child and believed she should have had some say in the
matter, but as with most disagreements with her brother, she could not directly
tell him this upset her. She instead
internalized it, told me about it, acted passive-aggressive about it, and was
generally disagreeable on the subject.
Uncle
Blair’s time with the ashes wasn’t really that long. He became ill too and
passed away. For some reason, instead of my mom then getting the ashes they
went to my Aunt Sharon, Blair’s ex-wife who was always very close with my
grandmother. This further bothered my
mom, although no one knew this. There is no judgement passed on my aunt, I’m
quite sure my mom never said “I want them back”. It took me telling my cousin so she could
tell her mom. And in all fairness I wanted my mom to be able to make a decision
about this. Eventually the ashes got
passed back to mom at a family picnic.
There were those metal boxes again and this time they only made it as
far as my mom’s car. They sat on the floor of my mom’s old Honda CRV, driving
where she drove, along with all the other crap that my mom never took out of
the car. For some reason one day I looked down and saw them, I wasn’t driving
in the car, probably just retrieving something and said “what are those boxes?”
and she said “those are Mom and Dad”.
More wishy-washy family stuff.
She finally got them and she couldn’t deal with it either – she couldn’t
even take them out of her car.
Now
comes 2016. The year my Grandpa Tex’s sister, my great-aunt Juanita, passed
away. The year we moved my mom to Colorado to an apartment near my sister and
the year of dealing with all the crap undealt with in more than 20 years of
family indecision. While making arrangements with Sunnyside for my great aunt’s
Juanita’s grave my mom reminded me that her grandmother Opal’s (Grandpa Peggy’s
mom) name had never been added to her grave marker. I talked to a person there about fixing this
and while I was at it I asked my sister if she would share the cost of placing
the grandparents to rest. Bless my
wonderful sister, she was in for the whole program. It wasn’t easy. The State
of California doesn’t let you stick a plain metal box in a grave and call it a
person. They want proof of the stuff in the box, like death certificates and
notarized documents by next of kin. Hence the many trips to the cemetery. I had
the route down after so many Saturdays of meeting a very kind woman to sign
this or that, turn in this or that, or look at this or that, that when I hit
traffic on my way to actually getting the grandparents in their grave, that I
had to check with Waze for route that would get me there on time so I could
witness this thing finally happening.
I
felt, and I believe rightly so, that after being incredibly patient, after experiencing
the cemetery telling me that my great grandparents were not buried there (they
weren’t in the database transfer from Sunnyside to Forest Lawn), of paying for two
graves in one year, of paying to fix the cement slab that my great grandparents
plaque lay on in order to get Opal’s name added to her plaque and paying for a
new plaque that I deserved to be present when my grandparent’s boxes where
actually placed in their vault without paying yet another fee. I fought and cajoled and got my way to
witnessing this without having to pay an extra $500 dollars for the privilege. And
that is why I needed to be there on time. I think Tex and Peggy created the traffic
jam that made me search out another route with Waze which directed me on the
nostalgic tour.
This
is how Waze told me to go:
1) exit
the 91 freeway at Bellflower Boulevard. This is the street on which my Grandma
Peggy’s parents had a dry-cleaning store - “Bellflower Cleaners” – the same
store that she lived in the back of as a kid until they found a house a few
blocks away. We had spent countless
hours together on this street shopping at the western store, eating at the
Woolworth’s counter, visiting my great-grand parents. The old store and house were about a mile
from the freeway exit.
2) Next Waze sent me down Bellflower Boulevard,
past the giant donut-in-the-sky donut shop (like Randy’s Donuts by LAX) we went
to when I was a kid and the fabric store we frequented pouring over pattern
books and material.
3) Waze then had me turn right on South Street
which ran on the south side of their old neighborhood – the neighborhood my mom
and Uncle Blair grew up in.
4)
Waze then
told me to turn left at Lakewood Boulevard - this was the corner that housed Bob’s Big Boy –
my favorite childhood restaurant. The corner of many chocolate shakes with my
Grandmother. It also sent us down past
the laundromat my grandmother went to weekly, past the Lakewood Mall where we
ate Sunday night suppers at Clifton’s Cafeteria before church and bought
special occasion clothes at the Bullocks department store.
Waze
took me past their entire California lives.
I was kind of cry-laughing the entire trip. I felt touched beyond the grave,
mischievously guided on one last ride. I
felt them both with me there and not just as ashes in metal boxes moved from
dresser to house to car and beyond. But
as incredibly special people to me that were saying goodbye to their earthly
lives and to their eldest grandchild.
2016
has been a challenging year but a great year. A year for saying goodbye and
putting old issues to rest. Of honoring my ancestors and putting things right.
I placed those plain metal boxes in the vault and on each one I sat little
statues that were the likeness of my grandparents – Peggy is at her sewing
machine and Tex is reading in his chair. I put a young picture of them together
and a later life picture of them together. And there is even room left in that
vault for my mom for when her time comes so I don’t have to face this decision
again. The grandparents are finally in
the grave and it’s a good thing. It’s a
really good thing. And I am so thankful
that I felt such love from them for my childhood and young adult life and that
now we all know where they are for now and for the future. Grandma Peggy and Grandpa Tex are at their
place of rest, finally.
