20

Spring has finally arrived. The brown and grey landscape exposed by melted snow has clothed itself in bright green. Spring clean-up and gardening have begun in earnest. The outside air feels warm but refreshing on my bare arms, and I’m reminded of the springs of my youth, when I didn’t merely see the seasons emerge — I felt, heard, and smelled the changes around me. Redwing blackbirds chitter enthusiastically from the trees. A lawnmower drones from somewhere down our road, and the smell of fresh cut grass and dandelions mixes with the fragrance of lilac bushes in full bloom. A bumblebee brushes against the window screen, its burly hum a momentary crescendo as he bobs along the house. A car drives by with the windows down, and I can hear music playing from within.

Our roadside ditches, no longer filled with snow and the husks of dead vegetation, reveal emerald blades of grass, bright yellow flowers, the beginnings of poison ivy, and discarded beer cans. I’d say there is “litter,” except there really isn’t. Just beer cans — all different brands — lodged in the fence line, burrowed in the long grass, or lolling on the gravel shoulder. Drivers seem to favour discarding them onto rural roadsides instead of keeping their empties in the vehicle. Maybe, I don’t notice the other litter. I hate the beer cans.

My son will be tempted to collect the beer cans for the refund cash. I’ll tell him to wear gloves and be careful of the wild parsnip. A few days later, he’ll be itching poison ivy sores on his arms. A month later, there will be more beer cans, and he’ll be tempted to collect again, until the tall grass and parsnip hide the aluminum bounty.

My husband has been renovating our gardens. I’m hoping for a less jungle-like layout this year. (Maybe something that doesn’t require a machete to chop a path from our front door to my car.) He and my mom often trade gardening advice and plants. This is also the time of year when my mom goes to the graveyard to plant flowers and tend family graves. That’s where she and I are headed today. 

The cemetery is a forty-minute drive away. The historic acreage has sedately watched a busy urban centre sprout up around its waterfront grounds over the past 150 years. As we drive along the cemetery’s winding laneways, beside verdant lawns and elderly broadleaves, beneath ancient conifers and the mossy gaze of stone angels guarding graves from the 1870s, I recall that Victorian families would picnic in cemeteries. Before parks, cemeteries offered green-space, beautiful sculptures, landscaped grounds, and peaceful walking paths. 

My great grandmother and great grandfather are buried here, my grandmother and grandfather as well. Their gravesites are in the older part of the cemetery. For many years, the location of my great grandfather’s grave was unknown to my mother’s family. When I was very young, my mom suddenly felt pressed to find her grandfather’s lost grave. He’d died long before she was born, and she knew very little about him. Nevertheless, she embarked on a search that involved politely harassing cemetery staff and sifting through records dating from the earliest part of the 20th century.

My great grandfather’s burial site had been marked by a flat stone plaque, inscribed and then left to nestle deeper and deeper into the earth as the decades passed. The difficulty of my mother’s search was that the grave marker was completely covered by soil and grass. The stone tablet was finally discovered using an iron pike repeatedly stabbed into the ground at the location indicated by cemetery records. There were three unused burial plots surrounding my great grandfather’s grave, which was surprising in a section of graveyard that had long ago been filled to capacity. My grandparents decided to buy the adjoining plots. Two would be for them. Only months later, my cousin died in a car accident, and the third grave was given to him.

The phone call came on a Saturday morning. In my mind, the memory replays as a reflection in our 1980s cabinet television. My younger siblings and I had been watching Saturday morning cartoons. We turned off the TV when we realized something was wrong. I was still in my nightgown, and I remember the image of me sitting on the floor, afraid to move, mirrored in the darkened television screen. There’s no movement, but there is sound — my mother crying on the phone in the kitchen, crying and pleading with someone. “Why didn’t somebody tell me? Why didn’t you call me right away?” And, “I need to see him. I need to see him!”

My dad later told me that my cousin had died. I was eight, and I thought I understood what death was. I remember my cousin as a teenaged guy with a mullet haircut and acne and eyes that twinkled with mischief. I often saw him at my grandparents’ house. He was nice and took the time to explain important things to us little kids — like why vampires don’t have reflections. I remember him saying something really rude once in front of my grandma and me. My mom scolded him, but he smiled wide. It was clear he loved getting a rise out of her, and she knew it. Death meant I wouldn’t see him again.

The graveyard is damp from all the spring rain, and the black flies are almost unbearable. Lichen and moss have obscured the inscription on my great grandmother’s headstone. We’ll need to come back another day with scrub brushes to clean it. The hostas are overgrown and need to be pruned. For now, my mom holds back the variegated leaves so I can take a photo. I crouch in the thick grass and swish flies away from the lens as I focus on the mottled stone surface.

We’ve made a bouquet of flowers for my grandparents’ gravestone, and it’s a short, slow drive to that hillside overlooking the water. I touch my grandmother’s name and think of her laugh. She had a wonderful laugh. On days when we baked together, arranging ingredients across her Formica kitchen table, she would tell me stories from her younger years. Sometimes a story was followed by serious counsel on topics ranging from dating to ghosts, but most times, the story concluded with her wonderful laughter. She died of cancer at the age of 92. I help arrange the flowers we brought and bend to photograph the gravestone.

Opposite my grandparents, are my great grandfather and my cousin. My great grandfather died in 1918 of the Spanish flu. He was only 29 years old and left behind two infant sons and a young wife so distraught she had to be sedated for the funeral. How bewildering that disease must have seemed at the time, so strangely selective, attacking strong healthy individuals while brushing past the weaker, more vulnerable population. Despite its name, no one knew where it originated, nor the cause, let alone how to prevent it. 

I read the name and dates on my cousin’s headstone. I don’t remember the funeral. I was, after all, eight years old. I don’t think I was allowed to go. I do remember how devastated my mom was. Afterwards, I found out more about the car accident, namely, that the driver and the passengers of the car had been drinking — my cousin included. I thought I understood what drunk was. Drunk meant having a good time with your friends. I also found out that my mother had tried to talk her family into having an open casket. My cousin’s injuries had been extensive, and the condition of his body had been considered too distressing for viewing. My mom had said, “People need to see.” My cousin’s casket remained closed. He was 20 years old.

My son is at home. He planned to collect beer cans from our roadside this afternoon. The last time he did this, he filled two 18-kilogram bags in a two-kilometre stretch of road. I imagine the drivers, drinking and tossing their empty beer cans out their car or truck windows as they speed down our country road. So many people. So many beer cans. So many roads.

The Monday after the phone call, I’d gone to school like normal. It was the last week of school before summer break, and the hallway that morning was alive with energetic children spurred to constant movement and chatter by the recent warm weather. I stood outside my classroom door. There was a boy beside me whom I’d always considered to be nice, kind actually. He was a year younger than me, and he always smiled. We waited in line while other kids milled about, taking off outdoor shoes and talking loudly. This morning, he was not smiling, just waiting beside me, looking at the floor. For some unknown reason, I said to him, “My cousin died this weekend.”

He looked up. He seemed genuinely concerned. Quietly, he said, “My cousin died this weekend too.”

“It was a car accident,” I said.

“Mine too.” 

We stood silent for a moment, together in a strange sphere of sadness amidst the flurry of children laughing and bustling around us. Then, he said, “I think they were friends.”