I Will Say Your Name

The Task My Grandmother Bequeathed Me

I made my fall visit to the cemeteries today, toting a plastic bag of silk flowers from The Dollar Tree, a metal trowel to break up the hard earth, and a trash bag for dead leaves and litter.

It’s not the way my grandmother would have done it; she would have cut fresh flowers from her garden, putting them in mason jars of water to keep them from wilting as she made her monthly trek from cemetery to cemetery. I’d be in the back seat, carefully keeping the mason jars from spilling over, the promise of ice cream tempting me away from a Saturday playing Barbies with my friends.

I didn’t understand it, my Gran’s need to spend a Saturday morning on her arthritic knees before a gravestone, her gloved hands pulling at errant weeds and tsking at pieces of candy wrappers while I held the trash bag. I didn’t even know most of the people whose names were engraved onto the solemn stones. They were cousins, Gran would say, or neighbors. Or a friend of hers that surely I remembered from that one time she came at Christmas. I would shake my head and hold the bag, more anxious for the ice cream than I was for Gran’s stories.

Cemeteries were creepy, I thought. They were surrounded by stone walls and tall metal gates that could lock you in at night. Sometimes granite angels stood balanced atop a gravestone as Gran weeded and planted, their stony features the things of a child’s nightmares. Or, even worse, the grave of a child, birth and death dates the exact same, a stone teddy bear or tiny footprints finding their way into my dreams.

But Gran said cemeteries were peaceful places, places of rest. “Don’t listen to your grandfather’s stories,” she would say. Grandad, a farm boy from Lancaster County, had more than his share of spooky stories of graveyards and the undead, the stuff of Halloween nightmares. But to Gran, the cemeteries were not at all creepy; they were a place of remembrance. And while I’m sure Gran, salt of the English soil, didn’t have a smidgen of Egyptian in her blood, she would often tell me, “You are still alive as long as someone speaks your name.” After the cleaning and the planting was done, Gran would slowly and carefully speak the name of the dead cousin or neighbor or friend, then dust her hands off and move onto the next person to be remembered.

You live as long as your name is spoken. Egyptian Proverb

Our last stop would always be at the grave of Gran’s parents. I remembered them a bit. They had lived in a room in the back of my grandparents’ house; PopPop was a dapper man who dressed always in a vest and tie and liked to make ashtrays out of matchbook covers. MomMom was a round woman in floral housedresses, peering through gold-rimmed spectacles as she taught me to thread a needle. Gran would clean their grave and plant their flowers and I would trace their names on the dark stone, saying them out loud, my tongue catching on the consonant blend.

“One day,” my Gran would say, “this will be your job.”

I would shiver at the thought. There wasn’t enough ice cream in the world to make me take on the task of cleaning the graves and visiting the dead. What difference did it make to those buried there anyway? It’s not like they cared if they got flowers every month or not. But I kept my thoughts to myself, afraid I would forfeit my ice cream if I denied the charge.

But I get it now. With more loved ones’ names to speak out loud, the task Gran handled with such love and devotion is now mine. While I don’t make it to the cemeteries every month and never have fresh flowers to bring, I do manage every season to clean off each grave and plunge seasonal silk flowers into the ground. I trace the names engraved on the stones and speak each one out loud.

My last visit is always to my husband’s grave. I take more care and more time on this task. I trace not only his name, but the birth and death dates. I cry a little.

And I speak his name out loud, so that he will not be forgotten.

Is there someone in your family who performs this task? Is it you? Do you feel that this is a way to remember those that passed, or do you embrace another tradition?