To My Sweet Cousin

I think about you so often, Kathleen! I've missed you so much since you've been gone. Lately I've been doing several things that especially remind me of you: visiting old cemeteries, cleaning headstones, and I recently saw a book about ghost towns.

 

I remember not just our Cemetery Weekends and our Ghost Town Weekends but also little things that happened on those trips. Like in that one extremely rural cemetery when we heard a strange wild noise up in a tree; you immediately headed away from it and I immediately headed toward it. I was under that spindly tree, craning my neck, and finally you convinced me to get away. Later we found out it was a bobcat!

And the time we finally made it to that really small old cemetery, the one we'd been wanting to visit for almost 2 years, and a funeral was in progress. You said, "The nerve of them! Having a funeral on the one day we could visit!"

Remember when we snuck onto the posted property of that abandoned high school, and you became apoplectic because I went inside to take pictures? You peeked in from the small, hidden door, and you kept up a running monologue. You called, increasingly louder, "Don't go IN there. You know we're trespassing, right? What if there's snakes? Watch out for that glass! There might be dangerous squatters in there. We're hours from home - who's gonna bail us out? You're gonna need a tetanus shot! Don't go up those stairs - are you CRAZY? You'll fall through those boards! That's it - you come out RIGHT NOW." I finally realized you were really in emotional distress, so I came back outside. It had been so dark inside, and you hadn't let me go very far. So all that for one photo. It was an okay photo, though, of the stage at one end of the gymnasium; the only well-lit area I found.

And somewhere we saw that child's grave, Bonner Boone Brown. For years afterwards, out of the blue, you'd say, "I still want to know who would name their kid Bonner Boone Brown!"

Remember that cemetery where a huge block of family graves was surrounded by a cement curb? We approached, as we always did at blocks of graves, planning to work through the familial relationships and the order of deaths. But at this one, we just stood and looked in disbelief. One man, surrounded by 8 wives whom he had outlived. In the great silence of nature, you finally whispered, "Do you think he murdered ALL of them, or just some?"

Last week I ran across the photos from that ghost town with the huge football stadium that had risers made of cement. We were so lost in the past as we looked across those ruins that had melded with the desert. I miss those moments.

And I remember the time we drove to visit the graves of our great-grandparents. We couldn't find them in the first cemetery in town, and you said, "This cemetery doesn't look right. This isn't it." Being older than me, you remembered more. So we went to the other cemetery in town. "This is it. This looks just like it. They're somewhere over - there!" But we still couldn't find them. So we went to the town library and asked the quite elderly woman how we could find the graves of our great-grandparents. She helped us look through a large number of cemetery records but kept asking us, "Are you sure that's the name?" And you just kept saying, so politely and patiently, "Yes, we're sure that's the name." Finally, long past the realization of futility, I said, "We'll just ask our mothers exactly where their grandparents are buried and then we'll come back some other weekend." The old lady sighed with relief and began to close the books and files. "Yes!" she said, "That's good! You come back with another name." You managed to make it all the way to the outside steps before busting into laughter. "That's right!" you choked out. "We just need to come back with ANOTHER NAME! Then we'll find out where they're buried!"

We never had the chance to go back with another name.

 (That's me in the background,

wearing black and standing with my arms folded.)

I haven't been to your grave since the week you were buried. You were only 57 years old. It gives me comfort, though, to know that you're buried next to my mother. Anne frequently puts flowers on your grave and the graves of our mothers. I sometimes wish I didn't live across the country now, because it would give me some temporary peace to visit all three of you. Even though I know you're all in Heaven and I'll actually see you again some day; in Heaven I'll have real peace.

My dear, precious, funny, interesting, and loving cousin Kathleen, I remember you.