The funeral of my son-in-law's beloved father, the patriarch of his large family, was to take place at a cemetery in Germany, in an area I thought I knew. I was given two sets of conflicting directions, but felt I knew where the cemetery, or Friedhof, was. I drove to the small town along the Neckar River and up its steep main street, and turned right after the town's ancient gateway, as per first set of directions.
I was dismayed to see three roads, one going sharply upwards, two equally appallingly small roads cantered downwards. According to my idea of where the cemetery could be, I chose the center downward road, which quickly curved tightly and lost its paving. I found myself perched on a tiny intersection of two horrifying unpaved choices. One road lead upwards, mine continued steeply down.
A schoolboy passed by, about the age of my grandson. Testing my German, I called out to him, asked the direction to the Friedhof. Politely, he knew of no cemetery. A bad sign. Perhaps he didn't understand my German - the cemetery had to be nearby. It's a place where dead people are, I said desperately, buried underground, with gravestones. Now I surely had frightened him. He knew what a graveyard is, he said, but he had never seen one. OK - I understood. No Friedhof. If I go down this hill on this road can I go forward to a main road - a bigger road? No, the road doesn't get bigger. Umm. Ok, if I go down there, can I turn around and come back? Yes, you can turn around. I thanked him. He remained rooted to the spot as I drove away. I’m certain, seeing an old woman clad in black, talking about dead people and looking for a graveyard, he wondered whether he had seen a witch, or a ghost.
At the bottom, I found a community of houses clinging to the side of the hill with a road no wider than my car, and there was the inevitable garbage truck occupying the entire road, coming my way. The driver shouted - I saw he intended to come forward, and so we inched by each other, move by move, me with my right wheels on someone's garden edging bricks and my left mirror less than an inch from truck appurtenances.
I asked a local person watching this amazing procedure how I could find the Friedhof. He told me, horrors, I would have to turn around and go back. Said he, go to the left, keep going downhill, to the left, down. OK, thank you. And then, when I am left and down, where is the Friedhof? There is a stoplight. It is after the stoplight.
I never imagined I could turn my Honda Accord around in such a tight space, but I did it. Left, left and down. I was on a main highway I recognized. No stoplight. But I recalled the second set of directions, and so drove through the town again, up its humpbacked main street, not turning at the Tor or gateway, and through the next town to reach the main highway, making a right turn to pass below the town again, this time on the highway.
Look for a gravel road was the direction. A small road. I found one. Turned off the highway. But it was a gravelly road leading down into a darkness of foliage. Not again! Across the highway was a bus stop with a mother and her child waiting. I sprinted across. (Didn't know a little old lady could sprint, did you? Neither did I.) I asked the mother where the Friedhof was. It was now ten minutes to two, the funeral service would begin at two. The mother knew of no cemetery in the area. OK, said I, there is a small road across the highway where my car is parked - could that go to the cemetery? And the child said - No, that road does not go to a cemetery. Said the mother - And how do you know where that road goes?
By gesture I conveyed my apologies to the child for getting her into trouble. The second child I had done-in within fifteen minutes. I drove on down the highway, pulled into an area by a construction site and decided, having come so far, I would not be able to attend the funeral. I couldn't find it.
Pulling out from the site, intending to drive away, I saw a sign directly across the highway - grabmale - a gravestone business. I stopped so abruptly I was bumped by the car behind. That driver appeared terrified to see me leap out and run towards her. Did she know where the Friedhof is? Straight across the highway, she said. That little road. Go straight. There is a road to the right, one to the left, but the Friedhof is straight ahead. Best directions I received.
I arrived just as the service began, in time to honor a husband and father who I greatly respected.
Death is no less than life. Life is at best a bumbling procedure, but death with one's loved ones drawn close by sorrow and by age-old ritual, has incomparable dignity.
Unveiling
Linda Pastan
In the cemetery
a mile away
from where we used to live
my aunts and mother,
my father and uncles lie
in two long rows almost the way
they used to sit around
the long planked table
at family dinners.
And walking beside
the graves today, down
one straight path
and up the next,
I don’t feel sad
for them, just left out a bit
as if they kept
from me the kind
of grown-up secret
they used to share
back then, something
I’m not quite ready yet
to learn.
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