The Backpack Press

I’ve finally convinced my children that it can be both informative and restorative to visit cemeteries. Is this a major accomplishment and testimony to my superlative parenting skills? Yes, most definitely.

My daughter and I paid a brief visit to Michiana over the weekend. Michiana is that difficult area that is part Michigan and part Indiana and completely difficult to explain to New Yorkers. You fly through Chicago or Detroit and change planes to South Bend but my family didn’t live in Indiana even though I went to high school there and my dad worked there. So, sometimes I say I’m going to Chicago – lots of people have heard of Chicago. Other times, I say I’m just going home and then try to field the questions about where exactly that is. But if you grow up in this no-man’s land, you get really used to moving back and forth over the state line so often it tends to blur. It’s Michiana and it’s where my family is.

This trip we decided – yes, we – to visit as many cemeteries as we had time. We started out at Notre Dame (pictured above) to visit the graves of my twice great grandparents who came to South Bend in 1880 to help build the first Catholic university in America. They are both buried here in a cemetery on campus that used to be the parish graveyard,

I stepped out of the car to visit their graves, leaving the window on the driver’s side open. When I got back, there were two leaves on my seat. I took that as a sign.

The next day, we left early to find a cemetery farther south near Culver, Indiana where my 4th great grandfather and his wife are buried. This was a beautiful, very old cemetery but it was in wonderful condition and their stones were quite beautiful. I took some photos and got back into the car and saw the trunk light “open” light was on. My daughter assured me I had somehow pushed the trunk button and she got out to close it and we drove on.

The next graveyard was in Argos where my great grandparents and their siblings are buried. I have a twice great grandfather who was a Union soldier and his gravestone was donated to his family by the US government. There’s a metal marker identifying him as a veteran too. While I was standing there, a ladybug landed on the back of my jacket.

I took that as a sign too.

Our next stop was at a nearby cemetery in Plymouth where the pioneers of my father’s family are buried. The stones are broken and very difficult to read, but I have the cemetery records and can identify the occupants of each of the plots in the farthest and oldest section. When I visited this site a few years ago, the cemetery officer who took my phone call was kind enough to post bike flags on the graves so we could know which were our family’s graves. And he took and sent me photos which was a tremendous kindness.

When I got back in the car, again the trunk light came on and again my daughter closed it, reminding me not to hit the trunk button and we went into town to shop a bit and get lunch. We found ourselves in the midst of the annual Halloween parade with kids and grownups alike in costume. It was wonderful – not at all scary. Just wonderful.

The next day, we stopped at the cemetery where my mother is buried and laid small stones on her grave to let people know someone had been there, someone cared. I found the grave of one of my best friends who died in the 8th grade and placed a stone there as well. It seemed the thing to do.

But it was only on our way out of town, back to the airport, that I needed actually to open the trunk to put something inside. To get into the trunk – triggering that warning light – I had to pull up hard on a lever near the bottom of the driver’s side door. This action releases the lid and you can get things in and out – but it’s just not a button you could graze with your jacket. It’s a handle. And you pull it back until you hear the trunk lid pop open.

I think I have to take that as a sign too. Creepy? Oh yeah. But wonderful? Most definitely. The spirits are with us these days.

My three favorite holidays are Halloween, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day, which is also known as the Day of the Dead. I have to come to appreciate these days more in recent years for a number of reasons, not the least of which is my new-found hobby: family history research. This hobby has brought me in and out of a dozen wonderful cemeteries since 2010, both here in the US and in Ireland, and through these visits, I find myself now coming around to an understanding of a single line in a prayer I learned in the second grade.

“I believe in the communion of saints.”

I have recited these lines, from memory, in complete oblivion all my life. They are nestled in and among some lovely words that I memorized in grade school, along with the Pledge of Allegiance and the Girl Scout Oath. The line never meant anything to me other than a suggestion of a certain reverence for the holy men and women who have been identified by the Catholic Church as saints. These are the people, all dead, who have made a spiritual impact on the living. They are remembered by their followers, their neighbors, their town.

But I have always thought of saints as separate from me, different from me, and better than me. Isn’t that why we call them saints? They work miracles, they were strong, or devoted, or saintly in ways to which I can only aspire. In my dreams, I could be like a saint.

I visited the cemetery just a few weeks ago to see where my mother is buried. It’s a small town cemetery that I have always had a fondness for because I recognize most of the names on the headstones. These are the graves of the mothers and fathers of the children I went to school with. It’s not a particularly fancy place. There aren’t any impressive monuments or large mausoleums, but my best friend from the eighth grade is there, so every time I would drive by, I’d think of her and smile, remembering how we spent time sledding in the winter or sharing bags of popcorn at the local movie house.

When I started collecting information about my father’s family, I located a document that listed that very cemetery as the final resting place of his great aunt and her husband. I found their graves and added photos of the headstone to my family tree, all the while thinking how nice it would be if someone had photos of them so I could get to know them a little better. My aunt died in 1938 so I considered the exercise a lost cause.

Then, I thought, it was time I left some flowers as a tribute to my slim connection to this woman and her husband. I had given up the idea of every knowing what she looked like and I knew very little about her, but I decided that pink carnations might be a fitting tribute. The color looked great against the grey stone, so I took another photo and left. The next day, I was looking around for old photos of the town and I stumbled upon a collection online of the lake resort my aunt and uncle had owned where so many of my relatives had gone to dance. The photos were labeled “grandmother.” It was her.

It would be easy for me to say that her spirit led me to find this marvelous online collection of photos of her and her family. I could say there was some creepy force that motivated me to go to this particular site, looking for photos of the town and finding the very thing I had looked for, but that’s not what this is about, I don’t think.

Slowly, I am coming around to something my cousin said when I told her what had happened, how I had left the pink flowers and suddenly found the photos. I had given up ever finding images of this aunt and now, in a single flash, I had a dozen of them. She said simply, “I believe in the communion of saints.”

And there we had it. Finally, and without realizing it, I had embraced the communion of saints. This communion is why I am drawn to cemeteries. This communion is why I find cathedrals and churchyards to be so peaceful and so calming. It’s much less about the Church and that prayer that I recited for so long and more about identifying the immutable connection between the living and dead. The departed souls we celebrate on the Day of the Dead are a real tangible part of this more abstract notion of a communion. We are all bound together by experience, by family, by loss, or by joy. We are knitted together with similar threads and in that moment when I am standing in the midst of the dead, whether it is in that lovely small town graveyard, or an antique churchyard on a hill overlooking the Irish Sea, or the civic cemetery next to my bus stop in Manhattan, I can feel it.

The dead cannot judge you or hurt you. All that remains is the communion.

I believe in the communion of saints.

If you would like a sneak peek at my next book, it’s here on Wattpad, a feature in Non-Fiction.

Imagine a place where you can be alone with your thoughts. A place to get away from whatever’s bothering you. I’m still interviewing churches and I am finding some very interesting things about these places. I am fascinated now more by the people than the architecture.

To be fair, it was the architecture that brought me to this quest in the first place – not looking for spirituality really or the answer to The Big Questions, but rather I was looking for galleries, stained glass, chancels, transepts, vaulted ceilings, and clerestories. I’ve studied churches for a very long time and it’s comforting that I can remember the terms and the dates of the different bits that go into Gothic and Romanesque churches.

And now? I want to know who is sharing my quest. My daughter told me when we were in Spain in July that it’s the women who go to church. The men go to the parks. And she’s so right. In churches in Spain, you will be surrounded by women of a certain age, all praying together, singing together, and chatting or gossiping together afterword. And the men are all catching up with their friends as they watch children chase balls and dogs while the mothers chase after them.

So whenever I find the opposite is true, that men are in church or older women on benches in the park, I like to watch them. I know both are public places, where anyone can sit and sort, and I also realize that most people keep walking, not noticing who is sitting where. But these people are all characters in my day’s drama and even if we never interact, they are still a part.

If you would like a sneak peek at my next book, it’s here on Wattpad, a feature in Non-Fiction.