Stacey's Headspace

I’m not a big fan of cemeteries. I get no comfort in going, camping out with my loved ones who have passed, and staring at the footstone that remind me that they’re no longer here.

Instead, I look at those footstones as a morbid reminder of what’s underneath the ground, six feet below where I stand. Definitely not a comfort. On the contrary, I always feel uneasy and sad.

It’s a rare occasion that I visit the cemetery where my parents are buried. This month, I happened to be there for a high school friend’s father’s passing. Coincidentally, he was being interred at the same cemetery where my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles now reside. Two generations were buried there, in a family plot that my grandparents had purchased. I guess they felt it important that they walk this earth together and remain under the earth together for all eternity.

While I understand that decision from a cultural and religious perspective, the whole thing gives me the heebie-jeebies. I have a more secular (and perhaps practical) world view, and the idea of my life being represented by a slowly cracking footstone and weeds for eternity is disconcerting, at best.

After the burial of my friend’s dad, my husband and I hunted for my family’s gravesite (I hate that phrase). We navigated the headstones, footstones, cracked sidewalks and gravel and finally found the site. I found my parents eternal resting places, marked by two small slabs of granite.

I remember choosing the design of my mom’s. I think she had taken care of my dad’s. Just looking at this picture gives me such an uneasy feeling that I still can’t explain.

I look at those two pieces of stone, and I am underwhelmed. In a handful of etched words, their epitaphs seem trite. They lived good lives, raised a family, participated in community and had friends. They were creative in their own ways and passed that value of beauty, art and music to me. Of course, there’s no way to adequately represent a person on a grave marker. So for me, staring at them offers no sense of comfort or connection.

It’s like, there’s a force in my universe that is wrong, almost like a crack in the time-space continuum or alternate reality that I’m living in. It’s my reality, but it doesn’t feel correct.

I thought I’d share just a little about them.

Stuart Barry

My dad left this earth when I was 22. It was premature, he was only 52.

He was a hearty man: strong, vibrant with a big belly and enormous musical talent. He taught me how to be a musician as I sat beside him at the piano while he played and I sang with him. He was strong and kind. He loved making off-color jokes and giving bear hugs. He loved his family the most.

Just after my 22nd birthday, the fall after I graduated college, he was diagnosed with an advanced case of thyroid cancer that has quietly grown downward and wrapped around his trachea. He had a major surgery to remove the tumor, along with some of his windpipe and his voice box, leaving him in a precarious state. He’d no longer be able to speak or sing, things that were basic requirements for his life.

Long story short, a few days into his recovery, a mucus plug blocked his airway and it took his life away.

At the time, he and I had been through a few rocky years. I was growing up, and he had a hard time with that. I was dating my future husband, who wasn’t Jewish, and he had a harder time with that. We struggled to communicate effectively, but we loved each other. I always felt like I was robbed of the light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel moment where everything would be okay between us.

And now, in my mind, I will permanently be in that uncomfortable point of stasis when it comes to the memory of my dad. No matter how I try to resolve it from a grown-up perspective, the young woman will always feel cheated. It’s a hard piece of reality to store in your subconscious.

Despite that, I try to be intentional about appreciating and remembering the gifts he did give me. The importance of being present for your family. Loving deeply and caring passionately for the important people in your life. What it means to be a musician. Fighting for what is important. For all of his trauma-based flaws and execution mishaps, I recognize that he was always doing the best he could.

Ronnie Sue

Fortunately, I had many more years with my mom.

She was a vibrant, brilliant, hard-working queen-boss role model for me. In 2016, she was diagnosed with advanced peritoneal (ovarian) cancer. It was a brutal injury-recovery cycle filled with numerous rounds of chemotherapy and emergency hospitalizations due to complications. Ultimately, she lost the battle in 2020, just shy of her 73rd birthday.

Mom was always my champion, and was often the salve and go-between when it came to the tough growing-up years. I know how hard it was for her to try to manage that relationship between me and dad, but she did whatever she could to try to nudge him out of his stubborn feelings.

We were lucky to share our children with her, and she saw us grow into our adulthoods. I knew how proud she was of us; she told us all the time. Even so, she got a raw deal at the end of her life, and so did we.

Navigating this version of reality

At the cemetery, I was reminded that I would never have the opportunity to know my parents as old people. My father’s passing was sudden and unexpected. My mother, certainly in the end, had aged tremendously by the constant battles she fought with all her energy. In her last week, I got a glimpse of the “old, tired woman” that I would have imagined her to be in her 90s.

Now, aside from the memories I have stored in my Swiss-cheese brain, I have the two footstones that are also showing the wear and tear of age. It feels unfair, to have been left too soon by the people who raised me to be the person I am now.

Reading this back, I see how morose these deep inner thoughts are.

That’s one of the reasons why I wrote a book about my mom, called What Ronnie Sue Knew, and published it a year after her passing. I wanted to actively create something that celebrated her life and the impact she had on me. I also reflect on my dad’s legacy, acknowledging the difficult last years and showing gratitude for the gifts he gave me as a father.

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I left the cemetery, feeling like I had done something dutiful. I’m not sure I fully buy into the idea that their spirits somehow appreciate the visit from out there in the ether, but I think I’m glad that I did. I think about them often, hope they are seeing everything that we’re doing “from up there” and are smiling with contentment that they raised someone who is good and happy.

As for me, I decided long ago that a cemetery burial for eternity would not be my post-mortem placement of choice. Donate my body to science, then bury the remains under a tree. Let it do something useful so that my children (and hopefully their children) might benefit from the knowledge of the doctors of the future. If I can keep giving and helping people after my last breath is drawn, I choose that.

I imagine it will be a while before I go back to that cemetery. My parents aren’t going anywhere, certainly, and I’d rather be comforted by remembering them through pictures and shared stories with people who knew and loved them too.