In Conclusion. Two cemeteries, two cities, and a…
By: Sara Benincasa
Tags: Relationships, Death, Family, Coronavirus, History

In Conclusion

How we talk to the dead

Wee Kirk o’ the Heather, Forest Lawn Memorial Park, April 19, 2020. Photo courtesy of the author.

I went to the cemetery the other day, not for any particular reason other than we are still allowed to go to cemeteries, at least for now. Ordinary funeral gatherings are not permitted at this moment here in Los Angeles, a city of four million people that spreads out over 469 square miles. I could not find the number of deaths due to Covid-19 within city limits, but Los Angeles County has lost 848 people to this pandemic. By the time you read this, more will be gone.

I’m from Hunterdon County, a rural area in New Jersey that takes up nearly as much space as my adopted city but contains about 3,875,000 fewer people. The biggest thing to ever hit Hunterdon County was the 1935 Lindbergh baby murder trial, after which they electrocuted a German immigrant despite evidence that he didn’t do it. Pretty much nothing happened before that or after that. Good public schools, though.

Twenty-one people in Hunterdon County have died from the coronavirus. I do not know if the cemeteries are still open back home, where the woods are blooming and the backyard gardens are in flower. A few weeks back, my hometown friend left a rabbit hutch open on her farm for five minutes. This week, her kids got to hold baby bunnies for the first time.

There is an old private cemetery in Hunterdon County that I liked to visit now and again as a teenager. It is full of graves from a family who has farmed in that part of New Jersey for more than three centuries. As a kid, I heard ghost stories about it, this place at the edge of a farm, by the side of a long road that is paved until it isn’t. They said you could see a glowing red light at night, eerie, coming from nowhere — a spirit hovering above a grave.

I heard that story for years and years. And then, one afternoon, I visited for the first time, with an ex-boyfriend I still loved who had broken up with me, ostensibly because I wasn’t the right religion but probably because he wanted to date a girl who would actually have sex with him. As an adult, I have broken up with people for the same reason, so I understand.

We were 18. I still loved him, a little, and thought maybe he would change his mind. Adolescence can be adorable, really.

We gazed up at the scrubby, bare tree branches arching against a cold early spring sky. We read the old tombstones, the names of infants and the mothers who died with them, and the fathers and children who survived to meet new wives, and stepmothers who not infrequently went on to die in childbirth with their own newborns.

“They died so young back then,” I said. “So many babies just, like, died. And the mothers. And then they just had to get another wife to raise the kids.”

“Can you imagine?” the ex-boyfriend said. “All that pain.” He had a lot of emotions.

I couldn’t imagine all that pain, and neither could he.

He and I wandered farther, to the newer, more boring gravestones. It felt a bit rude to trample over those graves, less a historical investigation than a breach of neighborly etiquette.

Then I noticed one grave several yards off, adorned with a colorful bunch of objects we couldn’t quite discern.

I walked over, drawn by the little pile of bright mysteries, until I realized they were toys: wind-battered Sesame Street figurines, dirt-caked plastic Muppet Babies, rain-stained My Little Ponies. This particular grave marker was for a little girl, and beside her stone was a battery-operated red lantern.

The red ghost was a night light.

I wondered who came at night to turn it on for her and who returned in the morning to turn it off. Maybe her parents took turns.

We left. We did not get back together. Not so many years after that, the ex-boyfriend married someone who was the right religion. I have loved a few people since then and have married none of them. I have no idea where he is now. I do not love him anymore, but I hope he is happy, in the way that I hope most strangers are happy.