gravity

I can remember idly wondering - in one of those short-lived, under-appreciated, pre-adolescent summer spells where "boredom" is an imagined risk, and "idle" is an actual state - if my affection for cemeteries meant I was morbid or otherwise "not right."

I would ride my bike from my grandparent's farm "all the way" to the cemetery up the road. The bike had been my mother's, or possibly belonged to a cousin who had long since moved on to other things. Grandpa and I painted it. With Rustoleum from the hardware store. A sort of semi-matte orange that showed every paintbrush stroke. He bought me a red banana seat with the deeply imbedded sparkles that seem an inverse 3-D - a sparkly depth that goes on for iridescent ever in the bright sun of Connecticut July.

I pedalled uphill to that place and was alone in a way that felt specifically mine. Not the alone that comes from sibling abandonment, or friends being thousands of miles away (our home was South, our summers were North), but the first glimpses of Alone that you choose. I would pull tangles of weeds away from some headstones.

I would wander those stones, read them. I would parse through the dates, do the math. Find some from 18-so-and-so and some, if memory serves, from 17-something. I would imagine their stories, their long-ago-lives of simplicity and unimaginable complexity - some cut short by war, commemorated by tiny flags.

When Grandpa died, I couldn't understand why his graveyard was one we had to drive to. Why it was so golfcourse-like. Grandma would bring flowers from her gardens, tend others she had planted. She would say a rosary. The honoring felt different with someone I knew - with the gravity (pun, perhaps,unavoidable) of the situation infusing those occasions with an awkwardness. I wanted to visit alone, and I wanted not to intrude.

Gavin, who has an abstract comfort with death that both a love of history and his own veteran status afford, shares my affection for cemeteries. On vacations, we visit them. He reads the headstones, looking for the oldest, the best epitaphs, the largest families buried together, the most interesting names.

We have visited his grandfather's, who had fought the good fight, finished the race (2 Timothy 4:7). We have spent hours in cemeteries in Scotland, in France. We have driven out of our way in wanderings to chase them down. We hiked barely marked paths in a National Park on spring break to find ancestral graves (and found them). And, alone in Vancouver, I caught the first glimpse of majestic mountains by veering off-course in my walk from work to my motel - through a beautiful cemetery.

Here, we live near one of Atlanta's grander 'memorial gardens.' I run there. 100+ acres, with an unparalleled view of the city. Its highest point marked by a marble couple, forever looking ever higher, with the city scape directly beneath them.

In spring, the real plants,those that threaten to overtake were it not for the constant attention of caretakers, flower. All senses are engaged as I pant along on my gimp foot, assaulted by pollen, confronted all sides by Death, and wisteria, roses, and later in the season, magnolias, all on the edges, trying to break in. And in the middle, acres of rolling manicured lawns. And the dusty, sad cheer of row upon row of fake flowers.

Aside from the occasional long-ago-planted oak, the lawns are free of actual plant life. Plastic flowers weather in vases cleverly constructed as part of the headstones. And yet, everywhere there are spigots - presumably to help you in your grave-tending.

I have had little contact with death, and have just enough religion / spirituality to say with some conviction that I do believe it hardest on the living. The serenity and beauty of the graveyards is there for them. I don't know for whom the plastic flowers fade.

I have been to funerals and their wakes - a scant eight over my lifetime, if I am counting correctly. I have seen passion and poetry, reverence and reverie, even dancing, toasts, and silver goblets. I have also witnessed air deader than the person being so respected. And at all, the coffins seemed universally ill-suited to the task. (Please. No embalming for me. If anyone's asking.)

My sister the brilliant poet wrote, while in high school, a poem about mortality to honor my (still living, at the time) grandmother that started "..'please don't put plastic flowers on my grave, ' she said. And I, unthinkingly, agreed."

Thinkingly, decades later, I agree as well - fervently, rabidly. But from wherever I am, I bet I would love a spot in a graveyard - a bench, maybe, to honor my life. Some wisteria - uncontrolled and unruly - and a few words well-chosen and carved on something more permanent than I, in a nice font.

Honey

He showed it to me while I was on the phone. Opened his hand, and there it was.

"I caught her."

He's almost 10. "She" was a bumblebee.

I thought to wonder why a bee, why his hand. Why holding, and how. But I was on the phone. We are nature people in this house, to the degree that our lifestyles afford it. We like creatures. It was pretty. I figured it was some species he had read about, that he identified as safe.

Later, I called him in from outside. He was sitting by the mailbox. On the ground. Dumbfounded "she stung me! She'll die. It hurts. It itches, too."

I said something like, "what did you think it would do?"

Later, I ribbed him further. Gave him a little grief about the bee, carrying it around like that. That just 'cuz it's furry doesn't make it a pet.

He said, "I found her on some plants at school. I carried her home on my shirt. I thought she was sick. She just stayed there. I talked to her. I told her I was going to make her better, but then she stung me. Now she will die. I killed her."

It was a leap of reasoning, a stumble of guilt.

"I thought, if she was sick, that maybe I couldn't make her better. That maybe she would have to be put out of her misery. And then? It looks like I killed her anyway. They can't live after they lose their stingers. I put her on a rose bush to die."

He sobbed. He lay his head on my lap and sobbed. That big, too-smart, eye-rolling, foot-stomping, put-upon boy broke down.

"Did she have a name?"

"Honey," his voice broke on the "-ney."

I thought of the old lady and the snake, the turtle and the scorpion. Those stories of the wounded and dangerous, made well, only to act out their nature.

He knew she was a bee when he brought her here.

"Maybe she knew, Bass. Maybe she wanted to thank you and offered her the only strong thing she had - the last bit of her 'voice.' She gave you her strength, so she could give up."

"You think so, Mom?"

Yes.

Squirrel

It's gotten to where I can handle the carnage.

Small animals, usually barely-recognizable birds, feet removed, wings off-kilter. It is ugly, distasteful gore. But I can remove myself a little. Scoop them up into baggies, place them in the trash. Lower the lid.

I feel some guilt about this, but our turf is about two inches deep. If you know Atlanta, you know then that at the high points (where we live) all is rocks and clay. Not burial ground material, really, unless you have a back hoe. Besides, given the volume of 'prizes' our young cat has deposited on our stoop... you would soon realize that one year with a huntress cat on our tiny plot - and we would have a mini-Arlington cemetery. At some point, burial is impractical - and I have no suitable incinerator of my own.

Yesterday, though - into our quiet late Sunday afternoon, having Sunday-schooled, homeworked, and erranded, with grill lit and evening approaching - Sebastian came in from the back deck with "Mom! Chessie did it again! This time a Rare and Exotic animal!"

My stomach sank, though I doubted his "Rare and Exotic" claim. I shhhed him. The littler littles did not need to know about this.

But I could handle it. Frankly, after the Helter Skelter bird scene two weeks back -three birds. One stoop. Many parts- I was prepared for gruesome.

...But there she was.

She would look asleep, except for the angle. And the wide open eyes, still bright, extra-large, coal black. The death was recent. A flying squirrel. Sweet faced. Wide-eyed. Still warm through my baggie.

I touched her with one finger. Crazy soft. Fur coat soft. Kitten chin soft. With the baggie, I lifted her little arm, saw how the skin connected, expanded. Her tiny exposed chest suggested she had nursed recently. A litter somewhere, abandoned?

I put her in the trash and, at midnight, was haunted by my conscience. It didn't seem right.

So, after work out, coffee, morning chaos, cereal complaints, multi-staged flurry out the door, and return home... I got a spade.

I found another corner, under the deck. I dug. Top layer: weeds and last year's pinestraw (reminding me again that I really must do something with the yard), then rock and broken concrete, a pine cone. Lots of clay. Formulas in my head - if people average 5'7" and burial is at 6 feet... how deep do I go for a sweet faced squirrel? I dug a little further, a little wider so the body wouldn't be bent.

I was reminded of biology and anatomy - of Bill, my beloved lab partner - a vet now, and even he couldn't have helped this creature - getting married next April. Of dissections and formaldehyde fumes. I was always fascinated and horrified at once. And so it was with this creature - the arm flaps that helped her glide (though, where, I wondered? In our thoroughly developed neighborhood, even the most ambitious squirrel could not glide tree-top to tree top - not without high gusting winds and unusually developed flying skills) the smaller, flatter tail. She was in-tact. It made it harder than skinned minks, fetal pigs - and later, those eviscerated birds.

Since here, with Kitten (now grown, aka Chessie, Chestnut, Miss Chesapeake, Chessica) the death toll has reached over a dozen. Chipmunks, mice, a couple of tiny snakes, two velvetty moles, many birds. That bunny. They say either your cat is a hunter or it isn't. Clearly, this one can hunt. And is compelled to do so.

I lowered the small, lovely creature. I said a prayer. I patted earth. I was glad, again, that children were elsewhere and mostly had no idea. I was relieved that she was in the earth, and not on top of the Herbie Curbie.

"Remember men that we are dust and unto dust we shall return." I sighed. And returned to my day.

Peace

Late, I ran out the back door to go pick up AB from gymnastics.  

And there... on the back stoop... a bunny.

Not a rabbit.  

Not alive.  

A small (but not tiny), half-cat sized bunny.  Sweet and very broken.  Stiff, with some entrails exposed - only enough to know that this was no gentle battle.  Killed dramatically and violently by the "good cat," the cat, at 11 months, still referred to mostly as "Kitten."

In a rush, I quickly wrapped the bunny in newspaper from the recycling bin, and placed her in the garbage can, on top of the trash.  

After dinner, Bass, for the first time in his nine years on planet Earth said, "I'll take out the trash, Mom." 

My response was swift and suspicious.  

I had, after all, a body concealed in the back yard.

That bunny body continued to haunt me through night reading and dinner eating and bath drawing and bandaid applying and bedtime.

What the heck would I do with it?  

Before living here, we lived in Florida, on a school campus.  Adjacent to a canal on two sides, a nature preserve on a third.  We had access to a dumpster, and an outdoor cat.  Over the years that dumpster received many things - rats, both whole and scattered; mice; fish heads.  And once, a very large and very dead iguana.  I had no problem tossing those in and forgetting about them.  

Here, with a different cat, we have had a mole, a couple mice, several baby snakes.  Once, a chipmunk, which was a little sad.  Each, unceremoniously thrown into the Curbie.  Probably put first in a plastic bag - but ultimately garbage, nonetheless.

But this...this was a small rabbit.  A bunny.  

My sister calls me "Bun" and refers to my children and hers as "the bunnies."  My daughter has bunny prints on her walls.  Bass' baby quilt, that he still sleeps with at 9, is covered in them. Because it was made for him by his godmother, his first baby sign was "rabbit," and it was both how he asked for his quilt and how he referenced his Aunt Agatha.

Before we bought this house, I drove by it at night, and a bunny was hopping across the yard. When we moved in, we saw one again - days after sleeping in it the first time.  One hopped past on Easter eve looking frantic, like it was 'on the clock.'

Bunnies don't go in trash cans.  

Maybe we could have a small funeral.  The littles could learn something about love and death and symbolism and animal instincts and the temporal nature of beauty.  We could bury the young rabbit together, sing a hymn or "Rainbow Connection."

They would be solemn.

We could say prayers.  Pick roses from the rose bushes.  Each softly pet one ear.  Bury the bunny with a carrot, and something else bunnies love best, like the burial of an Egyptian god king.  (We would no doubt have a long discussion about what that something else might be, knowing, as we do, scant little about the aesthetic preferences of bunnies.)

Bass would be either curious and scientific, "can I dig it up when it's bones?" Or oddly dramatic, emerging after bed while we are settled into Lost bawling about "I feel bad for that poor bunny. Why do we have Kitten anyway? I NEVER KNEW THAT BUNNY!"  

pPod would be matter-of-fact, with a stream of questions.  "Is 'dead' like being asleep, Momma? Will that bunny eat that carrot in heaven? Was Chessie trying to eat that bunny?"  It would become That Bunny, and the questions would continue for years:  "Remember, Momma?  When Chessie killded That Bunny and we buried it?  Member?"

Ah, but Annabeth.  She would be conflicted, possibly devastated.  She would feel betrayed by Chessie, the heretofore love of her life.  She would want to wrap the bunny in a silk scarf.  She would ask if she could do that, and I would find it hard to say no.  She would draw something for the bunny, to place in her shoebox.  She would give Chessie hurt sidelong glances for weeks - maybe years.  She would say, softly, "She didn't mean it, right, Momma?  It's just what cats do?" But it would be unconvincing.

After everyone was successfully bedded, I heaved a big sigh and trudged to the garage.  I got the edger.  I lifted the stiff broken thing in its paper wrapper out of the trash.  With the edger, I dug a hole, while in my pajamas.  Through pine straw, an inch of soil, three inches of red clay. Chunks of construction waste.  I went down 8, 10 inches.  A foot.  I placed her in.  I layered in the debris.  I patted it down. I scattered the straw on top.

I waved to the neighbors (and made a few "edging" moves, as if, well, maybe I'm out doing a little inspirational gardening... in my pajamas... at late dusk...)  

There will be plenty of small, soft, broken things.  Things we can bury together.  Teachable moments that come from soothing the child that found the thing, no longer warm and soft and woodland-creature-esque.  

But not tonight.  Tonight, there was no reason to drag them into my small sadness.

Sleep well, little bunnies.