The Cemetery

Peacefulness blanketed the small cemetery.  The smell of the freshly manicured green grass mingled with the flowering lilacs and newly cut flowers next to the gray headstones.  The sun filtered through the hundred year old pine trees with new pine cones forming on their branches.  Sparrows flew about the area.  Robins hopped along the ground, pulling worms from the moist soil.    The sound of a car door shutting broke the silence as more people arrived to attend the gravesides of their family members.

My father came to the cemetery every Friday of Memorial Day for the past sixteen years.  I went with him as a teenager, but I hadn't visited for eight years since I graduated and left to start a new life.  Some years, my grandmother attended the ritual (I think she started the tradition), but she now resided in the care center. 

The hour we spent delivering the plastic wreaths, Dad told me stories of the past two generations that were buried in different sections.  Our family traveled to the community of Libby, Montana in the 1920's.  Family further back from that year resided in the Midwest, before that the East, and we can go back to Britain before we came to the New World.  Dad didn't have stories about them, though I delighted in knowing there were stories.  I listened avidly back in high school, feeling a connection to those who came before me.  I loved listening to my dad tell stories.

On this day, Dad wore a blue light weight flannel tucked into blue jeans.  A stranger could look at his tall large form as intimidating.  Teenage boys might have thought that at first meeting him, but all those who knew Doug Nixon, knew him as a gentle giant.  My sister and I especially knew his gentle, loving side.  His large weathered hands took ours as children to lead us down rocky paths to his favorite fishing holes.  Those same hands wielded an ax to cut firewood.  They held his new born grandson, named for him.

I wore a warm jacket, not used to the cooler mountain mornings.  Next to my father, I felt small.  Uncharacteristically, I also felt weak.  Dark circles lined my blue eyes and my skin was ghostly pale.  No amount of coffee infused me with the much needed energy I lacked.  A month earlier, I went through a quick delivery of my second son.  Something had ruptured and I lost more blood then normal.  My nurse midwife in the tiny town on the reservation didn't order a blood transfusion.  Being young, my husband and I didn't think to insist on one. 

Once out of the car, we pulled the plastic wreaths out of the back.  I always thought fresh flowers would look a hundred times better, but the expense was too much.  Our tennis shoes grew damp as we walked through the grass.  Passing rows of grave sights, we stopped at Grandpa Nixon's.  Unlike many of the older graves, Grandpa's marker was simple and flush with the ground.  Worth Helmer Nixon, born April 6, 1909, died December 10, 1977.

I don't remember much of my grandfather.  He died when I was eight.  I know my dad loved him dearly and still missed him after eighteen years.  Grandpa was tall and thin.  He wore bibbed blue-jean overalls and a flannel shirt daily, unless going to a church function.  Dad bragged about Grandpa's beautiful vegetable gardens, peonies, and lilacs.  I believe both flowers where the favorites of these two bigger then life men.  I know I think of both of them when all of my plants bloom.  I will always have peonies and lilacs to keep these men close to me.  And the robin is one of my favorites because Robin was Grandpa's nickname for me.

Besides the memory of Grandpa's pictures, I do remember him in the kitchen.  He cooked pancakes for us at breakfast.  I don't know how he did it, but he mixed up Krusteaz Mix into the best pancakes in the world.  Grandma would make homemade syrup.  Now Grandma, Mom, and I all use the mix to whip up a quick batch, but none of us make them so light, fluffy, and perfect.  In fact, I prefer not to even eat them because there is no comparison. 

My thoughts went back to that December so many years ago while my dad put the wreaths in the ground.  My parents and I were seated at the little dinner table, snug up against the wall in the tiny kitchen in our single wide trailer house.  Baby Kimberly sat in my old highchair.  My feet didn't touch the ground as I sat eating my meal of fried venison and potatoes with a side of frozen peas from my parents' garden that I helped weed during the summer.  I was thankful to not have to eat the horrible mushy peas from a can.  Yuck!!!  The phone rang.  Dad grumbled, but got up to answer.  He picked up the cream colored receiver from the wall.

I knew something was wrong.  The color drained from his face as de leaned up against the fridge, tears falling from his eyes.  Fear spread through me.  I had never seen him cry until that evening.  When he put the receiver back on the hook, he informed us that Grandpa had passed away.  I didn't know it then, but life would never be the same for my dad again.  I learned the lesson thirty-nine years later when I lost my dad because my life was never the same.

Coming out of my memory, I looked across the cemetery anxious to go to our next stop.

"Can we go see Great Aunt Rebecca now?" I asked.

Dad smiled and picked up a small set of flowers.  Hers was not a wreath.  A brown vase held a handful of red flowers which connected to a plastic spike.  We made our way across the large field of grass.  None of the other relatives rested near my dad's aunt, Grandpa Nixon's older sister.  In fact, only a few graves were in this section.  No trees shaded the area.  No one visited besides my dad and I.  Her marker was taller.  Mrs. Rebecca Bowman and Infant, 1899, 1922.  She was born on July 10, named Rebecca Mary Nixon, and died on December 29.

"Will you tell me her story?"

"Well, in the spring of 1922, my grandfather and three of the boys, my dad being one of them, set out on horseback for Canada.  They had heard of a prosperous valley up north.  They drove their extra horses with them, but they ran out of money and stopped here in Libby for work.  Once they found a home, they sent for Grandma and the rest of the family except Aunt Rebecca.  She was married to a Wyola, Montana man named Bill Bowman and was expecting their first child.  Aunt Rebecca came later by train to be with Grandma during the birth.  On Christmas Day, she had the baby and it died.  Four days later, she died.  Her husband came on the train at the start of the new year to find both had died.  She and the baby are buried here."

I felt the sting of tears at the story.

"I wonder if the birth of her baby was like that of mine with Clay.  I wonder if she lost too much blood and couldn't recover.  Or if she just gave up because of her broken heart?"  My own recovery was going slow and I had the joy of holding my healthy baby boy, Clay Douglas named after my dad.  I couldn't imagine if he had died at birth.  I was also fortunate because I had a healthy two year old boy to live for as well.  Poor Aunt Rebecca had neither and her husband was so far away.  Yet, knowing the Nixon spirit, I really don't believe she died from a broken heart.  The fleeting thought was romantic nonsense.  Our family is made of sterner stuff.  She, like many women of the day, died from childbirth due to so many things that doctor's didn't know how to prevent.  My prenatal care probably saved me and Clay which Aunt Rebecca wouldn't have had.

I stayed with Aunt Rebecca for a while.  I vowed to visit her as often as possible and tell her story to my children.  I didn't want her to be forgotten.  I was born almost forty-six years later, but I felt a strong bond with her.  Later that summer, my little family and I moved to Hardin, Montana.  Wyola was only forty-nine miles away by interstate.  She remained on my heart almost daily for the three years we lived there.  I daydreamed of stories of her teen years in the tiny little town.  I wondered about how it was for her living on the Crow reservation.  I might have been teaching a friend's descendant.  I will never know.

I think of her often still.  My heart is broken knowing that no one visits her grave on Memorial Day anymore.  When I go home, I visit with her.  My parents will be buried beside her one day.  I am thankful she and the baby won't be alone.

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For years, I have dreamed of writing my stories.  My favorite author as a child was Laura Ingalls Wilder with all the tales of the old days.  The idea hit home the day in the cemetery with Great Aunt Rebecca.  How I longed to know more about her life.  Someday, I may have a niece, nephew, or grandchild who wonders about me.  Yet, how is my life of any significance?  Am I a little egotistical thinking my life is exciting enough to write about? 

Great Grandma Maria probably would laugh at me wondering about her life moving to Wyola and finally to Libby.  How hard was it to take the young children by wagon to Helena and the rest of the way to Libby in a Model T with her husband already in Libby?  I am sure at the time she thought it mundane, but I, ninety-six years later, am fascinated by the story that has died through the years.  She probably wouldn't want to tell me about the extreme suffering she endured when her twin babies died in 1909.  They were born on August 6th.  One died that very day.  There is no name in the family Bible.  I don't even know if the baby was a boy or girl.  Louis lived until September 14th.  Rebecca was ten years old.  How did her siblings death affect her?  She must have thought of the twins when she held her own baby who failed to breath.

History posses so many questions.  If we are lucky, we have lists of names and dates of those who came before us.  I want more for my grandchildren and great grandchildren.  I want all the people in my life to come alive on the page.  Of course, I am sure there are better writers to do the task, but I refuse to wait for them.  I, myself, have waited too long as it is.  In the last two years, I have lost my last grandparent, my father, an aunt, and an uncle.  Yes, I listened to their stories over the years, but I have also forgotten them. 

We can learn a lot from our elders.  Mine are quickly fading away.  Hell, I am fifty years old.  I am becoming an elder.  So, I begin my journey of writing about my past for better or worse.  I may be entertaining.  I may be boring.  I may bring enlightenment and wisdom, or not.  Either way, this is my story. 

I will use my imagination on the fine details.  Like in the story of the cemetery, I haven't a clue what either my dad or I wore.  Our spoken words are definitely not verbatim.  However, the episode did happen.  Others may remember the stories differently.  I do hope that someday people read the stories and learn of my amazing father, my mother, my supportive husband, the gifts of my children, the journey of my sister and I, and all the other great and not so great people that came and went in my life.  We may only be remembered by a few, but remembered we will be. 

And if after you read these stories, you find yourself in Libby, Montana, please stop by the cemetery off of Highway 2.  Say hello to Mrs. Rebecca Bowman who died too young at the age of 23.  Give her my love and tell her she hasn't been forgotten.