Stories about people

[cosmolinguist]

"Want to go out to the cemetery?" Dad asked on our way home Sunday. "You can see the flowers" (my grandma, his mom, used to put pots of artificial flowers on her family members' graves; when she couldn't do it any more my mom took over). "And you haven't even seen Grandma's grave yet, have you."

"No, not since..." The funeral. Just after Easter. "Yeah, that's fine, I don't care," I said. All I really wanted was to sit down--I'd been helping my mom help her friend at the other grad party she had to work for this weekend, and I'd been on my feet for six or seven hours, in heels. (I keep typing "hells"; quite the Fruedian slip.)

The trip was only a few minutes, and then I had to get out of the car again, which hurt, but once I was standing again I was okay. I looked down at the ground tiredly--which looks about the same as looking at the ground solemnly--as the wind blew my dress and hair around.

We'd stopped in front of the graves of my grandma's bachelor brothers Joe and Al, so I heard again the story my parents always tell about how they went to get my brother (he's adopted, like me) one Friday, Al saw him on Sunday after church, and died unexpectedly on Monday. This time Dad added Joe's story, which I don't think I'd ever heard before; his death was abrupt too but came a few days after he went to the doctor and heard that he had "a bad heart." My grandma had a really bad heart, too, but knew about it for years.

I looked a little more closely at my grandpa's headstone than I had before and noticed besides the PFC US ARMY WWII stuff, which was nothing new, it said PURPLE HEART under that, which I'd never heard about. Of course, my family never talks about anything; I barely know and often forget that my grandpa was in the Army or in the war at all. My grandma's only has her name and dates and under that, WIFE OF ORVILLE MATTHIES. It seems exactly fitting for someone who called women by their husbands' first names. She may not have liked him much (I always got that impression, at least) but she was Mrs. Orville Matthies.

Dad surprised me then by mentioning going out to the other cemetery (the Lutheran one, natch). My feet still hurt and I still wanted a nap but he was talking about some old momument that belongs to someone named Matthies and is all old and faded so you can't read it but he'd like to do something about this. He talked about this as we got back in the truck and drove to the other cemetery.

And, indeed, though I haven't seen this cemetery as much (my dad's family are all Lutheran, until my grandpa, who married a Catholic, thus making my immediate/intermediate family Catholic), I do remember this thing. It's a block of stone taller than me, and it always vaguely reminds me of a chess piece--a rook, maybe, with a little bishop thrown in. It has names on all four sides--well, had names; only one of them is legible now: August Matthies, who was born in 1840 and died in 1922.

Some of my grandpa's siblings are buried here, as well as their parents--my great-grandpa's name was Carl, and there's a great-grandpa on my mom's side named Carl too, so that's how my brother got his middle name. We looked at their graves too, but nothing was so interesting to my dad as the really old one. He looked at the dates of the other really old stuff to see if there was anyone else who'd been born as long ago as 1840, and didn't find any until just before we left, when he came across someone from 1806 or something like that. I've heard stories about both of my grandma's families coming here on boats--one's from Norway, one's from Luxembourg--so I'm used to that sort of thing, but I never thought about how long parts of my family have been in the U.S....in the same little towns in southeast Minnesota, no less.

Even though I have no great desire to end up in one (if I have to die, I want to be cremated), I like cemeteries. As silly as it might be for dead people to take up space in the ground, it does provide a tangible reminder of what has come before you. I like the excuse it provides for even taciturn folk like my relatives to tell stories about people. I like the way everything connects and intersects; everything I've written about here reminds me of other things I'm not writing because I want this journal entry to end some time at least as much as you do if you've read this far...but the free association tangents are still there, and I like that too.

Comments

[greenflower.livejournal.com]

I remember many Memorial Day trips to cemetaries during my childhood. One year I took pictures of all the gravestones, so that I would remember where they were, so that one day I could make the trip on my own. It didn't click until later that I should have noted which cementary each stone was in, and where in the cementary the stones are. So, now I just have random pictures of gravestones.

[cosmolinguist]

Though the pictures may not be as helpful to you as you'd planned, it still makes a good story. :-)

[gentleman-lech.livejournal.com]

Cemetaries are pretty nifty. The history of people, all gathered in one place, complete with stone monuments to commemorate their accomplishments.

And at least one person wouldn't mind a tangent-wandering post that went on longer than this one.

[cosmolinguist]

I consider that quite a compliment, you know. :-) I'm so lucky to have friends who like to listen to me babble; it's the only thing that makes the activity worthwhile.

But really, it's just more stuff like this. More people, more stories of how they died or what I remember about them. (Which could be something silly; next to the bachelor brothers is one who got married, and his wife. I'm often asked if I remembered them because they lived until I was one or two. I don't remember them as such, but I remember playing with their dog, Panda--some little, long-haired kind of dog--when they brought it to my grandparents' house. My parents don't remember the dog's name, but I always have. Stuff like that.)

[gentleman-lech.livejournal.com]

Maybe I'm just strange, but I like to listen to people babble. Often I find it fascinating, but occasionally I just want to hear the sound of their voice. Since I have to read this rather than listen, it's obviously the former. I think it's mostly that I'm amazed by what and how people remember things.

[toastedtuna.livejournal.com]

Your family seems to have such an incredible history. You've got yourself some fascinating characters for a book, or more than 1 book. You should sit your mom & dad's collective ass down, and interview them. Get details of everything you possibly can, and use the information.

It's a shame they don't talk more about things. Your family seems quite interesting!

[cosmolinguist]

It is a shame they don't talk about things, I agree. Sometimes even they think it's a shame; my mom used to say she wanted to sit my grandpa down and just get him talking about things--the war, his farm, whatever--but then he got Alzheimer's. My mom is the type who'll dwell on that in an I-told-you-so kind of way...but she doesn't value her own stories enough. I've talked about my dad's family here, since they're the ones buried in these cemeteries, but even there my mom has things to say and an interesting perspective on some of the events.

But then, maybe I don't value the stories enough either; I've always thought my family and their stories more mundane than most I've heard about from my friends and other people. But I do think everyone has interesting people in their past, if one knows where to look or who to ask--though knowing that is no small feat.

[gentleman-lech.livejournal.com]

I think you hit the nail on the head. "...my family and their stories more mundane than most..." Of course we think our own family's stories rather mundane. We grew up with them, after all. It's the unfamiliar, the stuff that's different, that we find interesting. So your family stories are interesting to those of us who don't know your family, and vice versa.

[cosmolinguist]

I know that everyone's perceptions of their own family are distorted--in many ways, but thinking everyone else's family is cooler is a big way--and while I still think some families have better stories (and, just as importantly, better storytellers) than others, it is true that almost everybody underestimates how cool they are in this respect.

[stealthmunchkin.livejournal.com]

=kisses her feet better=
I miss you

[photomoviegeek.livejournal.com]

I like cemeteries, too. I'm not sure why--I've made out once in the rain in a cemetery, and taken lots of pictures (especially black & white) in cemeteries, but also went to my grandfather's funeral, which was moving but not enjoyable...

[ted-souleater.livejournal.com]

Cemetaries aren't scary places anymore, after you've buried someone you were really close too. Cuz part of you gets buried with them, in some ways. Part of your spirit goes with them. And part of their spirit goes with you, so it's a trade-off.

[dracole.livejournal.com]

Very cool story. :)

Did you ask about the purple heart?

[cosmolinguist]

I didn't exactly ask but I did say something like "Oh, I'd never known he got a Purple Heart" and Dad didn't say anything. Maybe he just didn't feel like it, or maybe he doesn't know much about it either.

[dracole.livejournal.com]

Oh, well, anywho, your story was interesting. :)

[cosmolinguist]

Thank you. I'm glad to hear it.

[fairy-dianae.livejournal.com]

contemplative rambles are just fine with me, I hadn't even noticed the length before you brought it to my attention. The tales of the past pave the way for the tales of the future..

[kratkrat.livejournal.com]

If we ever have the opportunity, you must hang out with me and my friend Ryan. He and I have a history of traipsing about graveyards, just looking at stuff and putting forth thoughts or ideas on the lives of the people buried there.

Once, we reconstructed (sort of) a family's interesting past, just from the headstones. There was the son who died in the civil war, and his sister (not a twin, as I recall, but very close in age) who died mere weeks later. Perhaps, we thought, she died of a broken heart upon hearing news of her brother's death at Gettysburg. There were other bits and pieces we gathered from headstones, all with members of the one family, and wondered what they might have been like.

Ryan even got in touch with surviving members of that family at some point, and sort of interviewed one of the older members of the family, and got more details. Upon reading your entry, I find myself wondering... were there younger members of the family who never bothered to ask their elders of their own family's past, and this person was more than happy to talk to my friend the historian? Interesting thought.