Romancing the stones

A number of overlapping viewings meant that younger daughter and I had to be out of the house for two hours at midday -- which beats the not unusual three-hour or five-hour banishments, which include the Accent Snob, who, for obvious reasons, can't be left in the house while critical strangers tramp through it.

My neighbour had told me that, despite my impressions to the contrary, you can take dogs to Beechwood Cemetery, so off we went on a glorious early autumn day. The colours were late, after a rainy (indeed,floody) spring and summer and unseasonably hot September.

We entered the cemetery by Poets' Hill, and I noticed how many of the formerly blank book-shaped markers that curve rather preciously at the crest, now have names and dates on them. As we moved into the older part of the grounds, younger daughter began reading the stones, one by one, so I held back the Accent Snob to allow her to approach.

A lady who had been sitting in her car asked us if we had family in this stretch of hill. Her husband was buried here a year and a half ago, and she remembered he regretted not having a grave for his father, so he could visit. She decided to make sure he had a marker for her to visit. She lived far away on the edge of Greater Ottawa, and didn't get in often to tend to his flowers.

I told her about Archibald Lampman's sonnet and about Tommy Douglas' gazebo at the western end of the cemetery, looking toward Parliament Hill. She had heard of neither the sonnet nor the gazebo.

We slowly made our way back. I began to fear that younger daughter would feel compelled to read all of the thousands of monuments. I stood by with the anxious Accent Snob, and thought of my Friend With Whom I Had Coffee, whose mother had died that morning. And I thought of visiting graves. The Resident Fan Boy's parents have graves we can visit; my grandmother doesn't, and I doubt Demeter will.

This doesn't trouble me. There are many places that remind me of my mother and grandmother. None of them are in Hades.