The Sunday Morning Muse, March 10, 2013

Good morning. A bit tired today with daylight' savings time and all. No sunrise for the cat yet, staring into darkness out the window.

Yesterday was, to me, the first day of spring. It's not spring yet officially of course, but I saw the first crocus, the daffodils are up a few inches, and I pruned the blueberry bushes. It was 50 degrees and the sun shone brightly. The Greenhouse was 70 degrees inside. The cat laid in the sun. Period. Just laid there and put her nose in the breeze. I could almost share her thoughts.

The house seemed dank and airless when I came back inside. It's time to close the book on winter.

This week I went to the cemetery to take Dad's poinsettias off the grave. (I know, I'm a procrastinator.) The cemetery is in terrible condition right now and I realized that instantly as I turned off the main road. Wreaths are strewn like forgotten frizbees everywhere. Most plastic flowers are still on the graves, but some are horribly weathered, tattered, scattered and just a general mess. The ruts in the roadways back to to the graves are so bad I almost lost a tire. In short, I was pissed off right from the start. Isn't this supposed to be a respectful, serene, even hallowed place? Don't these people make enough money to pay someone to clean up? It's MARCH.

I was ruminating in all this when I got out of the car and noticed immediately that someone had to be clawing
their way out of here, because no one was supposed to be buried in Aunt Dorothy's grave. In a word, I was flummoxed. In the row below dad, Dorothy's husband has been occupying his grave quite alone since the 1980's and a double tombstone clearly marks the empty space where someday.... not today...his wife will
be laid to rest beside him.

I stood and stared. You know the feeling when something totally unexpected happens, like when Suki's bed started to shake in the middle of the night and she ran all sorts of possibilities in her head....Exorcist-type thoughts, burglars.... (under the bed??!!)... but it didn't occur to her it was an earthquake until later.

Well, this was similar. First thought...some terrible subsidence. Look, isn't the headstone sagging there? And the ground doesn't look disturbed as much on top, a few ruts maybe...but hell, it looks like someone....was put IN THERE. There's fresh mud, a bigger hole opening up along the side, but clearly the ground is very much disturbed here.  Hmmm.  (Keep in mind, this cemetery is looking pretty shoddy at best right now, perhaps a clerical error of some sort....another  Dorothy....buried here. I just didn't know.) But a bad gravedigging none the less. Subsidence, PLUS another body. Possible?

Or what about the sinkhole on TV the other night. Man eaten by the earth itself while in his bed. Hmmph.

Either way, I knew I had to make a phone call. And I was dreading it.

I ran a few trial conversations in my head when I got home. A tender way to tell her that she had to look into this, and in the mean time I would tell her about the holes in the road...and the wreaths and how bad it is here, too. Just because this would help my cause when I call and complain later on.... but those complaints were minor now compared to the possibility of... what went wrong with her grave.

So do I just dart to the end and tell what happened?

Well, there was this half price vault sale.... and a while back she signed up for it, and the gravediggers just got around to putting it in a few weeks ago. So, yes, subsidence is an issue. But no, there is no one clawing their way out, and no one buried in the wrong place. She did call and complain about how bad things look, so that's something.

I don't think I want to be buried at all.


(Later.)

The Sun is coming up now. And it's time for some fresh air.