Fox

My birthday fell on a Sunday this year.  As with most Sundays, that meant I went to see my Dad.

On the drive down, it dawns on me that I've forgotten to grab a lawn & leaf bag. I have a mind that I should stop at the cemetery, that the flowers left after the service are probably the worse for the frost and rain we've had since then. I don't know that I'm ready to go there, but something in there keeps driving me toward that first visit.  I ask The Boy to remind me to grab a trash bag when we leave grampa's.  Of course, we both forget.

I was nearly at the ramp to get on the highway after our visit, talking to The Boy about our afternoon plans, when I realized I'd passed the turn-off for the cemetery.  I change lanes and go back.

As we pull into the cemetery, The Boy looks over at me.  Somewhat hesitantly, he asks me if this is going to upset me. I answer him honestly:  "I don't know."

At first, I can't see the grave. I think it should be obvious to me - fresh soil, the remnants of sprays and arrangements...but I haven't gone far enough.  From the car, it's not upsetting.  We both get out and approach, and it's a sad scene. Most of the flowers and greens are well past their prime, and I have nothing to put them in, no way to improve this situation.

But wait...that arrangement still looks pretty good, it's just tipped over.  Stand it up, it's better.  Pick up that glass vase and lay the flowers on the soil, cover the raw wound of her grave, put the vase in the truck. These two baskets, the flowers can cover the soil, the baskets can come home. We can wash the mud off, and they can come back in the spring with new, fresh flowers for her.

I move to the other side, and I kneel in the grass.  I look at the soil, marking a grave freshly filled.  I look at the remnants of the spray we had put on top of her casket, and the one - so big, so beautiful - from my coworkers. I come undone.  I try so hard to hold it in and I can't...and The Boy sees and comes to me immediately, arms around my shoulders trying in his awkward, teenage, loving way to comfort me.

I pull myself as together as I can, looking down at the ground and I see footprints...fox, perhaps?...in the fresh soil. I start to pick up the handle of another basketed arrangement and see the tallest flowers have had the tops bitten off.  I can't help but smile. Even here, even now, the animals come to her.  Somehow, I'm comforted by this. The Boy and I continue our work. We leave the best looking arrangements upright, we scatter the remaining flowers over the soil to hide it, and we agree to come back next week with a couple big trash bags to do a better clean up.

It was harder than I thought it would be, and it hurt more than I thought it would.  As we drove out, The Boy asked if we'd come often. I told him how Grandma used to make sure there were flowers on her parents' and Granpa's parents' graves for certain occasions...Mother's Day, or Christmas, for instance.

 "Will we come on her birthday?" he asked, and the tears came again.

"Perhaps we will," I manage.  The rest of the drive home was quiet, each of us lost in our thoughts.

As a family, I think we're still trying to find our new normal, our new rhythm. Some things are the same, but some things will never be the same again.