Photo by The ConsortDad and the boys, Denny, Randy and Jim, pose at the cemetery after the successful re-interment of mom.
Photo by Jim KeyworthDad looks on as youngest brother Randy points to the vault where mom was placed. Her marble door has not yet been engraved.
OFF THE RIM:
Mom’s re-burial a moving experience
By Jim Keyworth
Gazette Editor
PART I
As I write this, we are flying back to Michigan to re-bury mom.
Fortunately, mom is powdered, not decayed. But she is buried, so we’re actually going to have her dug up and moved to another cemetery.
The re-burial is dad’s idea. Something about preferring one cemetery over another.
When I get there and ask him face-to-face for an explanation, I’ll let you know. He’s explained it on the phone, but dad’s hard to follow on the phone anymore.
While he still has all his wits about him, he is 92 and I find face to face works much better these days.
Mom died 10 years ago – almost to the day of the reburial. They were married over 50 years and were very much in love for most of that time. I remember a couple of rocky years – one in particular – but that’s not bad. Especially compared to me, a creature of another era.
It wasn’t OK to just walk away back in their time. In fact, I was the first in the family to get a divorce and it wasn’t something to be proud of – even in 1973.
But this is about mom, and she wouldn’t have it any other way. Mom was a strong woman who literally held the family together through sheer willpower – something most of us didn’t realize until she was gone. She simply wouldn’t tolerate divisiveness.
Funny thing, she really hasn’t gone for good. I get occasional signs to this day that she is still in at least limited control.
When she first died, she “appeared” to me several times in different forms – as a statuesque bull elk, a brilliant red bush, and a momentary rush of wind – all in the same spot in the forest. Nowadays, her appearances are less frequent and more subtle.
She collected Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls, and when she died I took one back to Payson with me to remember her by. It rests on a high shelf in my office, propped up against a picture of mom and dad – a place where no one, man or beast, can disturb it.
Nothing mortal at least. Because whenever she wants to remind me she is watching, she pushes the doll off the shelf and onto the floor.
I’ve read that spirits can perform such acts, although with great difficulty. So the gestures are small – like shoving a small Raggedy Ann doll off a shelf.
PART II
Back on the plane and headed back to Arizona after four cold and rainy days in Michigan. The deal on the reburial is that a new VA cemetery opened near Flint and dad feels it will be kept up better than the one mom was in.
Plus, he’s a WWII vet and he wants to be there with so many of his comrades. He didn’t say as much, but I got that feeling.
We got mom moved OK, and she is now in what they call a columbarium – “a sepulchral vault or other structure with recesses in the walls to receive the ashes of the dead.” The individual receptacles remind me a lot of the package containers on group mailboxes.
But at least mom is above ground now. If we move her again in 10 years, it will be a little less traumatic on all of us – mom included. We got some good pictures at the cemetery, including the one posted above.
Those are my two younger brothers with dad and me. Mom had three boys and always wanted a girl. I helped ease her disappointment by going shopping with her all the time. Mom was the consummate shopper, and I inherited the gene. Sometimes The Consort likes that trait, sometimes not so much.
The whole re-burial thing was pretty uneventful, although The Consort believes mom was messing with her at the cemetery. All of a sudden one of her earrings popped off her ear, and The Consort swears it couldn’t have happened without a little divine intervention. It still had the stopper-thing on it, so it takes on “camel in the eye of a needle” dimensions.
The rest of the day was uneventful, but the next morning after breakfast, The Consort and I were following my brother and his wife, Peggy, on a short walk from the restaurant to our hotel room when mom suddenly dislodged one of Peggy’s earrings, or at least so The Consort insists. She retrieved the earring, handed it back to Peggy, and that concluded mom’s interventions for the duration of the trip (unless she was responsible for 120 mph headwinds on the flight home, which wouldn’t surprise me). Think of the symbolism of such an act.
What she was trying to tell the two wives with her earring caper is anybody’s guess, but The Consort chooses to take it as a sign of approval. She came along after mom died, and she always wondered whether mom would have liked her – whether she felt she was good enough for me – and how she would measure up to the ones who came before. One extracted earring later and she has her answer.
PART III
Anyway, I woke up the morning after the re-burial inspired. I leaped from bed, ran over to my laptop and wrote down the opening lines to a poem called “Moving Mom.” It goes like this:
Moving Mom
We did the deed
We dug up mom
Then buried her
Again
We did it once
Ten years ago
But that was
Way back when
Nowadays
It’s no big deal
To yank her
Out the ground
And move her
To a better
Place that’s just
The corner round
You might think
It would be best
To just let
Dead moms lie
Tempting fate
Was not my choice
Though I didn’t
Question why
And when you
Think about it
It makes a
Sort of sense
To let her
Steal a whiff of
Air – although
In the past tense
A decade
In the darkness
Has been brought
To an end
And now it’s done
She’s in the crypt
She’s laid to rest
Again
You may think my poem disrespectful, but I’m confident mom would approve. She was a practical joker par excellence, and she would have had a good laugh at the whole thing if she could have.
Besides, she knows where I live, and if she doesn’t like how I treated her re-burial, she won’t hesitate to let me know.
Mom’s re-burial a moving experience
By Jim Keyworth
Gazette Editor
PART I
As I write this, we are flying back to Michigan to re-bury mom.
Fortunately, mom is powdered, not decayed. But she is buried, so we’re actually going to have her dug up and moved to another cemetery.
The re-burial is dad’s idea. Something about preferring one cemetery over another.
When I get there and ask him face-to-face for an explanation, I’ll let you know. He’s explained it on the phone, but dad’s hard to follow on the phone anymore.
While he still has all his wits about him, he is 92 and I find face to face works much better these days.
Mom died 10 years ago – almost to the day of the reburial. They were married over 50 years and were very much in love for most of that time. I remember a couple of rocky years – one in particular – but that’s not bad. Especially compared to me, a creature of another era.
It wasn’t OK to just walk away back in their time. In fact, I was the first in the family to get a divorce and it wasn’t something to be proud of – even in 1973.
But this is about mom, and she wouldn’t have it any other way. Mom was a strong woman who literally held the family together through sheer willpower – something most of us didn’t realize until she was gone. She simply wouldn’t tolerate divisiveness.
Funny thing, she really hasn’t gone for good. I get occasional signs to this day that she is still in at least limited control.
When she first died, she “appeared” to me several times in different forms – as a statuesque bull elk, a brilliant red bush, and a momentary rush of wind – all in the same spot in the forest. Nowadays, her appearances are less frequent and more subtle.
She collected Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls, and when she died I took one back to Payson with me to remember her by. It rests on a high shelf in my office, propped up against a picture of mom and dad – a place where no one, man or beast, can disturb it.
Nothing mortal at least. Because whenever she wants to remind me she is watching, she pushes the doll off the shelf and onto the floor.
I’ve read that spirits can perform such acts, although with great difficulty. So the gestures are small – like shoving a small Raggedy Ann doll off a shelf.
PART II
Back on the plane and headed back to Arizona after four cold and rainy days in Michigan. The deal on the reburial is that a new VA cemetery opened near Flint and dad feels it will be kept up better than the one mom was in.
Plus, he’s a WWII vet and he wants to be there with so many of his comrades. He didn’t say as much, but I got that feeling.
We got mom moved OK, and she is now in what they call a columbarium – “a sepulchral vault or other structure with recesses in the walls to receive the ashes of the dead.” The individual receptacles remind me a lot of the package containers on group mailboxes.
But at least mom is above ground now. If we move her again in 10 years, it will be a little less traumatic on all of us – mom included. We got some good pictures at the cemetery, including the one posted above.
Those are my two younger brothers with dad and me. Mom had three boys and always wanted a girl. I helped ease her disappointment by going shopping with her all the time. Mom was the consummate shopper, and I inherited the gene. Sometimes The Consort likes that trait, sometimes not so much.
The whole re-burial thing was pretty uneventful, although The Consort believes mom was messing with her at the cemetery. All of a sudden one of her earrings popped off her ear, and The Consort swears it couldn’t have happened without a little divine intervention. It still had the stopper-thing on it, so it takes on “camel in the eye of a needle” dimensions.
The rest of the day was uneventful, but the next morning after breakfast, The Consort and I were following my brother and his wife, Peggy, on a short walk from the restaurant to our hotel room when mom suddenly dislodged one of Peggy’s earrings, or at least so The Consort insists. She retrieved the earring, handed it back to Peggy, and that concluded mom’s interventions for the duration of the trip (unless she was responsible for 120 mph headwinds on the flight home, which wouldn’t surprise me). Think of the symbolism of such an act.
What she was trying to tell the two wives with her earring caper is anybody’s guess, but The Consort chooses to take it as a sign of approval. She came along after mom died, and she always wondered whether mom would have liked her – whether she felt she was good enough for me – and how she would measure up to the ones who came before. One extracted earring later and she has her answer.
PART III
Anyway, I woke up the morning after the re-burial inspired. I leaped from bed, ran over to my laptop and wrote down the opening lines to a poem called “Moving Mom.” It goes like this:
Moving Mom
We did the deed
We dug up mom
Then buried her
Again
We did it once
Ten years ago
But that was
Way back when
Nowadays
It’s no big deal
To yank her
Out the ground
And move her
To a better
Place that’s just
The corner round
You might think
It would be best
To just let
Dead moms lie
Tempting fate
Was not my choice
Though I didn’t
Question why
And when you
Think about it
It makes a
Sort of sense
To let her
Steal a whiff of
Air – although
In the past tense
A decade
In the darkness
Has been brought
To an end
And now it’s done
She’s in the crypt
She’s laid to rest
Again
You may think my poem disrespectful, but I’m confident mom would approve. She was a practical joker par excellence, and she would have had a good laugh at the whole thing if she could have.
Besides, she knows where I live, and if she doesn’t like how I treated her re-burial, she won’t hesitate to let me know.
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