New Years represents parades,football, and resolutions for many. For us, it’s our annual trek into Los Angeles to “visit the dead.” My older children used to refer to these folks – most of whom they never met in life – as “ansisters” and “anbrothers”; four year old Olivia calls them “bone people” and asked us to keep them out of the car because she didn’t want any blood or dirt on her. I told her, “No problem.”
First stop, Inglewood Park Cemetery (http://www.inglewoodparkcemetery.org/) on Prairie near the Forum, where, according to Olivia, “A lot of dead people in our family live.” With the exception of two years (one year, we took two pre-schoolers tent camping in Joshua Tree – big mistake – and another year, we couldn’t find our list of plots), we have made this visit every New Years. Yet we still wander around the place as if lost for the first 20-30 minutes before closing in on one of our target locations.
This time, it was Acacia Slope, final resting place for my great-grandparents on my mother’s side, and a great aunt. It’s relatively easy to find these plots because they’re near a clump of trees, and we actually attended two of the services there. We brushed the dust off the headstones, rubbed a little vaseline lotion on them for shine, and were ready to move on.
Or so we thought. Olivia must have been listening a little more carefully than usual to my family story-telling, or maybe she’s just that much better at reading than we realized…In any case, she wanted to know why “she” was in the ground. In response, we reviewed the details: Olivia “Louise” is named after me, and my great-grandmother “Louisa.” Only “Grandma Marzilli” is in the ground, NOT Olivia, nor will she be for a very long time, and then, of course, there will be a pink, sparkly “box” for her. Whew!
Next up, El Sereno, current home to Uncle Earl and Aunt Irene Parmeter, who was my maternal great-grandmother’s sister. I know that Uncle Earl was a brick mason and there are pictures of him with Aunt Irene and my grandmother at the beach, but in my memory, they’re always old, very kind – okay, indulgent – and I loved staying with them in their home in Gardena. The only part of the story that the kids ever seem engaged in is Uncle Earl taking me to the Rose Parade…and why can’t “we” go?
Yeah…
Finally, the “lettered” plots. My great-grandmother Mamie and great-great-grandmother Julie Ann and THEIR husbands are buried here. This is an older area of the cemetery, where the numbering is both different and less clear than it is now, so it ALWAYS takes a while to find their headstones. It’s as if the graves are numbered like switchbacks and the plot numbers are at the feet instead of at the head. Still we found Grandma Julie’s and Grandpa Tom’s first, and Grandma Mamie’s a few minutes later, without too much trouble. We cleaned them up, left flowers, snapped pictures.
It was while we were looking for the final plot that the trouble started. Olivia found a headstone for “Olive.” “O-liv,” she said. Then, “Why is ‘Ollie’ (Olivia’s pet name for herself) in the ground?” “Sweatheart, that’s someone named ‘Olive,’ not ‘Olivia,’ like you.” She thought about it, but did not move on. We were still there comparing “Olive” and “Olivia” when Ted found John Gullion’s headstone. In fact, Olivia, the day’s flower goddess, didn’t budge until it was time to leave the flowers and then she asked if we could “Please leave this place” because her tummy hurt.
Although it’s possible Olivia was just hungry – I was starving and Reiley was threatening do “die” herself for lack of nourishment – but I think that maybe this year, the “impermanence” of life, hit a little too close to home for her.
My family duly honored, we headed back home via Redondo Beach, where Ted’s maternal grandmother is buried in a very obvious location just inside the gate of the Pacific Crest Cemetery (http://www.funeralhomesguide.com/).
Unlike Inglewood Park, where we hardly used our shears and only really had to brush at two of the headstones (one was covered in pine needles from a nearby tree and another is decidedly downstream of sprinkler wash, so it was pretty dried-mud encrusted), here we could have used an edger. I held Olivia, who was “done,” and my older children dutifully watched as Ted cleared about two inches of grass from around perimeter of his grandmother’s headstone, brushed, and shined. Then Parker, light bulbs flashing all around, remarked that “Oh, Auntie Elaine is named after Elaine Bailey, who is Daddy’s Grandma!”
