Transient Nature of a Crabapple Tree

Look at the glorious branches pulled down by the weight of seemingly weightless blossoms. A couple days of 86 degree temps caused them to quickly burst into bloom.

And then just as quickly the petals fall. I enjoy sitting under the branches to watch the myriad insects on the flowers. Then they are the chickadees also attracted by those insects. There is a buzz, a twitter and gently falling petals. Sunlight filters thru but he light breeze keeps my bench spot comfortable.

Come fall the flowers will have turned to small crabapples. Then come the orioles, waxwings, robins to devour the fruit. But there will still be plenty left come spring as those same birds return famished, stripping the tree bare of the small dried fruits.

Carpe diem. Maybe it is with age that I linger more on the transient nature of life. Aren’t we also but one bud that flowers in a blaze, but in time are gone and forgotten. Perhaps along the way we made some contribution in some way, but maybe not. In the end it is all the same.

Bad News – Receiving, Writing, Sending

Today I received a private Facebook message from an old college acquaintance. In recent years we became Facebook friends. He has always been a gracious, very nice person. Judging from comments of his staff and friends he has carried that throughout his life.

His posts became repostings of photos from other sites. I knew he and his wife had moved into a condo two years ago which I thought, in passing, he seemed yet too active to give up the house and yard, etc. Then towards the end of 2019 I noticed infrequent to no posts. First thought was that his dear wife may have an illness. Facebook is a rather frivolous, superficial entity, especially to older generations whose lives are not lived publicly to elicit meaningless adorations from ‘friends’.

I posted a comment specifically sending Steve new years greetings. People have good reasons to refrain from Facebook, but I wanted to tell a nice guy ‘good wishes’.

Today I received a private message from him. He has bladder cancer. He has had it for 18 years. Now he has 2-4 to live.

He apologizes for starting off my new year with such news. But he writes it with straightforwardness and simplicity. How do you tell someone? How do you respond? I wrote back words fail me; no thoughts and prayers, cheap sentimentalizing. I told him to message me if he wanted; my own mortality is something aging is making me keenly aware of.

This has hit me surprisingly hard. Puzzling as we were never truly close, as in boyfriend, relationship close. He was a nice person to have contact with, and someone from earlier days who grew up in the same area.

Yes, my mother died 3 years ago, mid December. But I don’t get this reaction thinking about her. Yes my 18 year old dear cat died a year and a half ago; it was a thyroid problem, but he lived 2 more good years after diagnosis.

Suspect it the increasing realization of mu own pending mortality.

We have the philosophic discussions, talk with detachment about dying and death. We say what we would do, the best approach, review the pros and cons and criticize the medical profession all with detachment but when the time actually comes people take a different stance.

I think I will go visit the cats at the SPCA, after some 15 year aged scotch.

Empty Residence

The apartment is stripped of its live blood. The menthol smell that gave me pause every time I opened the door has long faded. Her presence is gone. Not even memories linger.

The couch sits empty of the big pillow that cushioned her aching back.  Fox no longer blares on the television. The dining room table has assorted papers, receipts, documents full of details no one is interested in. There won’t be any Sunday coffee and cake at the table again. Family pictures that lined the hallway are gone, mostly. Isn’t anyone going to claim that faded wedding photo with bridesmaids dressed in mint green?

Now that the Persian rug is gone I see yellow stains on the carpet. Can’t remember if that was the reason she purchased it, to cover the stains. I know she always wanted a Persian rug, but no one else does now.

People come to buy the dining room table. Special occasions were celebrated here with food she made, for over 50 years. Now the buyer comes and the room is dark.  I forgot that the lamps are gone. But we manage and now the walnut table will be used for small boys and their Play-Doh.

It’s not her apartment. It is devoid of her. We are our stuff. It defines us. The smells, the objects we’re used to seeing, the sounds, the pattern of the couch.

I liked sitting here Christmas Eve. I don’t like sitting in this soulless apartment. It’s hollow.

Funeral Director’s Open Ended Question

I don’t think the young woman who handled the funeral planning is actually a funeral director. I know for sure she is not cut of the same cloth as Thomas Lynch.

In this world of big corporations funeral homes are increasingly part of a big network, such as Dignity Memorial. You know what happens when the big guys come in – hire younger, lower paid staff, focus on sales, cut costs.

So there we are at the funeral planning session. The funeral planner starts with an opening question about the recently deceased who brings us all here: “And how was she doing? Was she okay the past year?”

WTF! No! We are at a funeral home because she died! She wasn’t doing well. She was 92! I sort of lost it with the inanity of this question. If she was doing well she wouldn’t be dead, right? Well I guess you could be healthy as a horse and be hit by the proverbial bus. Would that be easier to say in response to her opening line?

I don’t have any experience arranging funerals. But I know in my former corporate world we received lots of training in handling meetings, asking open ended questions to uncover needs, etc. Does Dignity train these people at all? Do you just need to be slightly warmer than the stiff nearby to get the job? And they all seem to wear black; how solemn of you. Is there a casting call for the Addams family? If you want to be cheery and upbeat to match your opening line perhaps add a splash of color.

The meeting went downhill from there, not due to funeral staff. No, it was family members needed to exert power and vent old animosities. The most Christian of them are the least charitable and mean.

Oh yeah, they didn’t do a good job on the body. Folks, seriously reconsider the viewing option. Anything to escape the horrors of embalming. Mother didn’t seem to have an arm in her sleeve just something hard, and it just plain didn’t look like her. I tried not to focus on that body but tried to remember her as I last saw her or even better as her photo of when she was 18 and had the excitement that comes with a young life.

Christmas Eve – Remembrance and Discovery

I spent the Eve as I normally did, at my mother’s. But she wasn’t there. This was always the night of celebration in our German family even though my sister has gone American with Christmas Day now the celebratory day. And I left the big holiday for my mother to enjoy with grandchildren and great grand children, from which they excluded me. Which was fine as I never enjoyed the over the top gift giving, the football on TV and over sweet American deserts.
I wanted to be in her home. It no longer has the pervasive method smell of her last years. And it was quiet. The bottle of wine for on the table cleared to start going through the paper ephemera of her life.
My entire life was in her sphere of influence. I thought I knew her well. But there were little surprises. Lots of handwritten notes in her old- fashioned European script. There are two paper presentation folders (reused, of course) full of jokes. Tucked in the pocket are small notepads with handwritten jokes in them. The folders contain photocopies of joke poems, a cartoon or two, lots of funny stories. I had no idea she collected jokes. The funny thing is she was horrible at telling jokes. Her timing was off, she missed the punch line, stories told out-of-order, but she didn’t care. Funniest was at the end as she laughed at her own jokes!
Some jokes were really funny and I needed that last night.
I found her collection of articles and awards relating to her hospice work. She helped found the group after the death of my father, a group that she would have liked available with his terminal illness. In this collection I found her handwritten speech that she gave a hospice group on her own immigrant experience. I enjoyed reading her misspelled English, which makes the words sound exactly as she spoke them. Most startlingly was how dedicated an American she was. I tried to find the date of the speech to uncover the motivation for her strongly worded pride in America.
Lots of recipes! Dishes she never made, which is how it goes with most of us. She also wrote down some of her German recipes. And the old German cookbooks she used as a reference source; covers hanging, pages torn. There are several newer cookbooks on German cooking that people would find in book sales and give to her. Note this – older people have been cooking their specialty dishes and cultural cuisines for years, so why are you giving them these books.
There was the box with the Memory Book from the funeral home for my father’s death. I read the extra copies of his death certificate and obituaries in several papers, including a German language paper. 80 people attended his funeral and 35 cars in the drive to the cemetery. Hers was a much simpler funeral with cremation to follow and no drive to the gravesite.
She saved all the greeting cards sent her over the years. Had I know that? She placed them in photo albums, two thick ones. I know she picked cards with great card looking for sentimental greetings that expressed the saccharine sentiments of Hallmark. I couldn’t send those; they rang so artificial and false. That was a big difference between my sister and myself. She was big a greeting card tailored for every shit holiday on the calendar; I was big on personal visits. Would I have sent more had I know she was keeping a record.
Going through photo albums that I thought I knew my heart I still found little surprises. There were a couple of ancestor photos I didn’t know she had. Did I ever see her picture as a German Red Cross worker in 1942? There is a lot I’ve forgotten. Then I found an album I had never seen, pictures from her 80th birthday given by my sister which I attended. My mother never showed me this album. Probably because I am not in a single photo. That caught me cold. My sister already harbored such animosity back then? My mother was aware of this yet still pushed me these last years to include my sister, to call my sister, which resulted in disaster.
I spend 6 hours sorting, remembering, discovering, crying, drinking. I thought back to what might I have done differently. Would it have changed the outcome. I considered our sibling relationship over the years, I younger by 6 years, from my earliest memory and it never was close, more like simply sharing the same living quarters.
Her cell phone was on the table, smeared with face cream. I checked her the voice mail and scrolled through recent calls. Her last conversation was with a granddaughter at 8:54 pm. The next morning calls go unanswered.
I reflected on what I should or could have done differently in my mother’s last year. Her personality got her through war, turmoil, being driven from her homeland, refugee camps and immigration. She fought getting old, hated giving in or slowing down. It was easiest to give in and not fight about matters be they finances, medical care, or getting proper resources for hearing problems. Yes, I should have visited more. Funny, I resented more that she so rarely received visits from grandchildren who lived one half mile away and so felt the burden should again fall just on me. But it pains me to think of how much time she was alone in her apartment – she read, cooked her soups, got her recipes ready for a Christmas party for her card group, she watched some TV, she played scrabble, but was largely alone. Especially at her death.

Gone and Forgotten

One of the favorite phrases seen on older tombstones, say before the 1900’s is “gone, but not forgotten’.
As a visit to any cemetery will show, they are forgotten. And not only because they’ve been dead 100 years.
Last Saturday I decided to take advantage of the lovely day with a trip to a cemetery. I had already been outside all morning. And I knew my mother would come along because it means a ride in the car and maybe a little standing around outside; at 91 she has increasing limitations on activities.
Not just a cemetery at random, but check out the resting place of my sister’s mother-in-law who died last December. Her ashes were interred in her husband’s family plot in any old Catholic graveyard in the southwest area of Detroit, near the Ford Rouge plant.
Dorothy is the one who ever since we knew her we assumed she was as Irish as her husband. She honored the Irish high holidays, decorated her home in green furnishings, loved Belleek porcelain and British vases and those god-ugly Toby jugs. Lo and behold when one day I stuck her name in FamilySearch and found she was Polish! A story for another time.
The last time Mom and I ventured to this cemetery was 2000 when her husband Jerry died. His body was buried here, but Dorothy chose cremation so only her urn of ashes fill the plot. We found the family plot without too much driving around. Fortunately it is a fairly small cemetery and it was a nice day to drive around in spite of the industrial noise.
The Holy Cross Cemetery sits in a stark industrial area. Bounded by a railway on one side, on two sides it is flanked by Detroit Iron & Metals mountains of stone or pellets. They sprayed the mountains to contain the dust that still managed to settle over everything.
Most the graves dated to the 1920’s and 30’s. And the names were overwhelmingly Polish. It was a veritable unprouncable phone directory for Krakow or maybe Posnan. How aware was Dorothy of this? I know she rarely, if ever, visited her husband’s grave.
The tombstones were large – and since this was not a graveyard for Detroit’s rich and famous I wondered about the burden this placed on the families to have such large family stones. The practice here was individual small markers, then a large, erect family name memorial. If the family of Dorothy’s husband was typical, these were working class people. They lived in Detroit’s Corktown, the old Irish section.
The stones were all discolored by years of Rouge plant pollution. The black sat in a layer along the top and ran down the front of the stones. There was a large, marble Pieta atop one stone; Mary’s face was eaten away and gave her the look of a leper. A finger of Jesus was near falling off. It was representative of the bodies beneath.
We viewed the of Dorothy’s family by marriage. Noted all the sons buried there and of course the mother and father. But missing were wives! How did Dorothy slip in? But the flat, individual stones were hard to read being nearly covered by encroaching grass. The family left, the son of Jerry, Jerry’s grandchildren and several great grandchildren, don’t visit. Ever. One granddaughter has come on occasion for her grandfather Jerry. The rest are forgotten, their stones and lives taken over by a thatch of thick grass. No one wants to remember who they were, when they lived, figure out their relationship to the others. I had a garden tool to place some dried flowers, but it wasn’t enough to tackle the overgrown grass. I needed a spade. With my foot I worked to push aside the grass as we tried to read the stones and follow the family history. It isn’t our family. But we have not graves left for our ancestors that we can visit anywhere. The Russians and the East Germans took care of that.
I was puzzled that the cemetery seemed to have a sort of class system in effect. The graveyard was divided by the roads into the prominent mounds of the front sections, and then mounded, round central areas. Toward the back the land was more flat. In viewing the cemetery from the back to front, an area of no tress to the larger trees up front something became clear. Several areas only had large gravestones; all the small grave markers were together in a separate area. I’m not sure I’ve ever seem such segregation of gravestones by size. How do they manage that? When a family buys a plot how can they be assured they will place a large family marker there? Further, the small stones were in order by date of death: 1931 followed by 1932, followed by 1933.
Another oddity, or rather a sadness visited on too many cemeteries now days. I noted several gravestones with the imprint of a large, empty, oval space. There were several. A practice in ethnic cemeteries back 60 years and more was to put an enameled photo of the deceased on the gravestone. These were missing. At the front of the cemetery, near an administration building were the most significant tombstones – large, imposing blocks of stone. They still had photos. I got old of the car to look more closely. I find it a nice touch to view the dead, as they or the family wanted them remembered. These enameled portraits all had chip marks on them; someone had tried to remove them, without success, so far.
From Holy Cross Cemetery I could see gravestones at Detroit’s venerable old Woodmere Cemetery. We drove over there. Now here were truly the rich and once famous. This cemetery too, has dealt with vandalism. The mausoleum doors has been removed by the vandal hoards and are now boarded up with plywood. No longer can you look inside to see the light shine through stained glass or to view the inside decorations. And they too are forgotten.

On Death and Old Age

A 95 year old family acquaintance just died. 95 years, just shy of 100 years on earth. Everyone knew the end was near; she was now hallucinating and in a nursing home moving to a care facility. Had an episode where she demanded the staff and family get those darn cats from under her bed. Then she talked of seeing her long dead husband, next day her brothers, also long dead, stopped in. That must be sort of nice, to see old familiar faces. Don’t really know if they were people she missed or loved. Take it Dorothy was happy to see them. Didn’t seem to care for them when she was alive.

Dorothy was a very secretive woman. For years we assumed she was just as Irish as her husband (his parents emigrated from the old sod). She celebrated all the high holy Irish days. House had all the requisite Irish and British trinkets and knick knacks. We knew only the most basic info about her background – mother died early, raised by aunt, from Bay City. Then one day while searching through family trees online I plugged in her name. See, with my family I can never find anything. They were all pretty low profile, in an area that was saw a lot of troops plundering and pillaging back and forth, records burned so little is to be found. I relish looking up other families. It is ever so exciting to find a well organized and researched family tree, something I can’t find for my own family. And there she was, her immediate family with the rest of her branches in full leaf online. Low and behold, she was not Irish! It doesn’t get more Polish than her family.

Dorothy was not happy about my discovery. All those years of her sons and family attending the St. Pat’s parade, decorating with all sort of greenery. Everybody wants to be Irish. Face it – it is a fun group – drink a lot and sing tuneful sentimental songs. Even my sister totally distanced herself from her German ancestry, alas. Going in her house you would not spot anything German. Dorothy also was a avid Catholic. But in her old age she hung out with the old ladies of a Methodist church group. When the Methodist pastor was invited to say a few words at her mass he expressed surprise that she was catholic.

Think about it, she was 95 so her son is already in his 70’s. Can you imagine having your mother around until you are well into your 70’s? I am grappling with that same set up. My mother is 90. All my life I have received unsolicited feedback from her. Now she will tell you that she lets her children lead their lives, but the reality is different. It is a bit of the jewish mother guilt trip. They truly have no idea the influence their statements and comments have. They move away and expect you to visit them for the holidays and such. How often have I hear “do it for me” yet they never give pause to reflect on making these demands. She needs to not do it, for me.

Dorothy’s son will be lost. In your 70’s to loose your mother. It might be harder than loosing her in your 40’s or 20’s. Your lives are so very entwined, especially with a mother who so freely imposes her opinion and keeps the apron strings tied. She really treated her only son like shit, especially as she got older.  Of course he never said any words back to her, like no.

Well the funeral and mass is Monday. Have to read up on church behavior for atheists, or non-believers. Her wish was for nothing in the way of funereal services. But this rite is really to give closure to the living; the dead don’t care anymore. Like my father said shortly before his death: “If they didn’t come see me when I’m alive they don’t have to come after I’m dead.” In his case many did come to see him, especially to his funeral and the procession to the cemetery. Dorothy will be put on display, visitation they call it, at the church, and then cremated. Cool they can just rent a coffin for the visitation. Glad to see they are not going the route of burning an expensive coffin. But she will still have to be embalmed, a nasty process. People don’t really understand what the undertaker does otherwise I think more would forego that gut-wrenching procedure.

I can’t say I’ll miss Dorothy. Not only was she secretive but her propensity for lying, in situations that really didn’t warrant that, made me distance myself from her. We came to realize her husband had been a buffer for much of her behavior. When he was gone everyone had to suffer her irrational, lying manipulations. Oh I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. When I die will people be hard pressed to speak well of me? Can I change that in the time left?

Centuries of Bodies Ch 6 pg 15

It is striking, in retrospect, that not all cemeteries here have been destroyed. The Jewish cemetery was destroyed before the war by Germans and a plaque is all that marks the site on the north edge of Heydekrug. But throughout the area it is clear certain cemeteries were targeted for destruction. Not all cemeteries containing Germans had to be expunged. The effort was not directed at all religious sites. The British and American pilots at the prisoner of war camp have graves undisturbed; the Catholics in the city are safe, but all traces of German Lutherans are gone. The only acknowledgement they get is from the wind blowing over their bones now scattered between the heather.
As I traveled through Europe I’d often wonder that any cemeteries were left at all. There were those troops marching back and forth, pillaging and plundering, two thousand years history, revenge and retaliation, tanks rolling back and forth, bombs smashing the landscape, mass graves. There can’t be a piece of land untouched by violence in some way. Or, on the other hand, think of all the hundreds of thousands of people that died in Europe. Doesn’t it seem there should be a lot more cemeteries? Where are all those bodies from all the centuries before?

What’s Behind Coffin Number 3? Ch 6 pg 14

Some of the vandalism did fall to the local inhabitants. As a result of shortages on construction material they pilfered the metal fences and grave markers to use on their farms. Others stole anything that might be of value to sell – good granite and marble lay around for the taking. And then there were the actual graves, the bodies and what lay with them. Grave robbers looked for jewels, gold teeth, anything that maybe had a resale value. They dumped out the bodies and plundered the coffins. Maybe it is good that the forest now covers what once was the old cemetery of Gnieballen. Perhaps what remains now lies there in peace, reclaimed, never again to be disturbed.
These tactics of abolishing cemeteries not only served to destroy and cleanse the land of previous inhabitants, but it served as a warning to the current liberated citizens. The Soviets were know as atheists, but is it right to say that as a result this made them more brutal say than the Spanish Inquisition, or the Puritans burnings witches in Salem , Massachusetts? The degree of brutality or savagery is rather irrelevant. It does however seem a rather unique approach to ethnic cleansing by getting rid of those already dead. It perplexes me, this act of taking out vengeance on bodies long dead. More than anything it violates a long standing human taboo about corpses, for whatever reason.
Yet there is something that puzzles me yet, something relating to the current day. So many Germans go back, so many want to reclaim their land, so many have formed these pseudo political organizations to take back lost lands. Do none of them want to ‘rebury’ the dead? Is there no one to even gather the bones in an act of respect for ancestors, burying the past in a deeper sense?

Death of a Neighbor

Another obit I recently found when I googled Harold Steele. He used to be my neighbor, roundly hated by all the residents on the street. You see, Harold was a bully, a rich bully. He did things his way because he knew what was best for the neighborhood irregardless of what others wanted.
Soon after I moved in we tangled. I had the advantage of not being beholden to Harold in any way whatsoever. I didn’t owe him money, I didn’t owe my elected township position to him, he wasn’t my employer, and he didn’t hold the land contract on my house. So I was free to tell him NO.
In the years prior to my moving in he intimidated neighbors to get the changes he wanted, on rezoning, letting his kids make everyone crazy with their dirt bikes, and yelling at people at township meetings – along with his attorney. It reached the point that no one on the street would oppose him on anything. Then I came along.
Harold requested a zoning variance to put up a big barn to house his motorcycle collection. I blocked it, successfully. Me alone. I do my research, I have connections and information, and I use it. The township board is afraid of zoning variances and I made them nervous about past discrepancies on Harold’s dealing in the township.
But back to his obit. Loving friends and employees leave glowing reports. He was a saint. Now how is it that all his neighbors missed that? How is it he was reviled and hated by homeowners around his estate?
I will speak ill of the dead because I hope he gets his due in hell, maybe spending eternity on a street where he has no power. He thought he was god – but it is proven that he wasn’t – because he died!