By Michael F. Duggan
Do you talk to the dead when you visit the grave of a friend or relative alone? I do.
And yet I am an agnostic (really an open-minded atheist) who believes that this life is all that there is. What else are you supposed to do? As with a belief in an afterlife, many of us are quick to ascribe special meanings to coincidences. We notice them because they are so striking, so much against the odds. I am also an agnostic (bordering on an atheist) when it comes to the supposed higher meanings of serendipity: at every moment something must happen. Why not a coincidence?
But I am nostalgic, some might say sentimental, and every few years on a Sunday, I buy flowers and put them out on the graves of lost friends. It had been a long time since I had visited these particular friends.
There was Richard, a friend of mine from third and fourth grade and the first person I knew my age (11 days older) to die. He was a mischievous kid who loved sports, the only autumn child of older parents. He died when he was 10.
The second was Maureen, a girl I liked in elementary and junior high school, who died in a car accident when she was in college.
The third was Dan, a free-spirited rogue from high school who loved The Beatles and Stones. Gone at 39. I had heard the song “Paint it Black” earlier in the week, and decided to look him up.
The fourth was the mother of my best friend from high school. She lived for 93 years, raised two boys who became remarkable men, and was one of the finest people I have known. An aristocrat in the best sense of the word.
The day was beautiful—56 degrees and sunny—the continuation of an open-ended, high pressure system that has given us 25 days without rain in the Mid-Atlantic states. I turned into the cemetery and saw several groups of people. There were two or three families with chairs and blankets and appeared to be having small picnics (it was the Sunday before All Souls Day).
This struck me as normal and in no way morbid. My mom’s family (German Catholics), would make a day out of going to the cemetery to visit the graves of lost relatives. Although the tradition was waning when I was a young child, I remember going to the cemetery in an attitude that was a joyous as it was solemn. I have loved cemeteries ever since. As a historian, I especially relish old boneyards as cultural time capsules that change remarkably little, where the yews and other decorative flora planted in grief may live to ripe old ages.
I got out of my car and in the cool breeze and strong autumn sunshine. The place seemed like a Platonic plane, complete with does with fawns, almost yearlings, some mellow Canada geese, and a handful of crows large enough to be ravens.
The first problem with my visit is that, although I had the specific numbers for all four graves, I only had section numbers for three of them. The second problem was that, although the sections are well-marked, the numbers are not given on the stones or the section markers.
Maureen is in Section 9. This is a large section, but I was able to find her grave in about 20-25 minutes, walking softly amongst the geese, and left some pink carnations there. I did not have a section number for Dan, so trying to find his marker was a nonstarter. I knew Richard was in Section 1, which I estimated to be 20 or more acres. I started at the far end and systematically worked my way back to where my car was parked.
After about 20 minutes, I came across a marker with the distinctive name of a friend of mine who is still quite alive. I never knew that he was a “Jr.,” and that his father was buried there. After about an hour of looking (and feeling a little like the Eli Wallach character, Tuco, searching a specific grave among the multitudes at the end of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly), I gave up looking for Richard, and was walking back to my car, defeated. When I was 40 or 50 yards away, I came upon his marker quite by accident. Apparently I had started my search at the wrong end of Section 1.
For some reason, Section 1 abuts Section 8, where my friend’s mother rests. My car was parked between the two sections. I walked over to the edge of Section 8 and looked out across its rows upon rows before me. Clearly I had another hour or two of walking ahead of me. I looked down at my feet at the first marker. It was my friend’s father who had died two years before I met the son. Next to it was the marker I was looking for. I halved the remaining bunch of flowers and put them on the two graves. There is nothing more emblematic of the limits of human agency than the placing of flowers before a headstone, and there is nothing more striking than a coincidence of this sort.
There is a notion of speaking the names of the beloved dead. I don’t know if this was something that was coined recently to call out official violence, or if it is a traditional custom in some communities. The idea, I think, is that as long as people are remembered, we acknowledge their humanity, and they live on in a certain sense, and perhaps literally. I do not believe in an afterlife, but the idea of keeping the dead alive in memory for as long as we live, appeals to me. And so Richard, Maureen, Dan, and Mrs. ______, I say your names, and am grateful for the fortuitous coincidences in life.