The sky was gray and the day was wet when we started out, carrying my father's ashes in a heavy, square metal urn to the Lutheran Cemetery in Middle Village. He would rest in a grave next to my mother and near the grave of his own mother, grandfather and great-grandfather. Eighty-four years ago my father rode in a carriage to this same cemetery with the urn of his great-grandfather's ashes rocking between his legs.
By the time Pastor Dale Lind had arrived to join us we had completed all of the necessary paperwork. The sky cleared as we wound our way out to the family plot in the old cemetery.
Pastor Lind shared thoughts about Dad and his life. We cried and hugged while we completed the service for the Burial of the Dead. Then we walked, slowly and sadly, to Niederstein's restaurant for lunch and remembrance.
We told stories about Dad. We laughed as he would have and as he wanted us to. Every now and then one of us would go silent, staring off into eternity wrapped in a memory too personal to share.
Ultimately, memories are personal. One of my most powerful ones from this weekend was a glimpse of Barbara, my father's wife of almost twenty years, turning back to the grave as we were leaving and gently waving good-bye.
That may become one of those memories that needs no help. There are memories that rise up in us, taking momentary control of our lives, sometimes prompted by a one of our senses.
My mother used to take my daughters with her when she did her laundry. While she folded clothes, she would set the girls on top of the dryer. To this day "dryer smell" will bring back memories of their grandmother for both girls.
We often use physical things to connect us to people and events we can no longer touch directly. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a time capsule as "a container used to store for posterity a selection of objects thought to be representative of life at a particular time."
Most time capsules are intentional. They are features of World's Fairs, centennial celebrations, and other anniversaries. This last week we opened an accidental one.
Since we were in New York, we took time to clean out a storage locker where my sister had put many of her belongings when she moved to California from New York almost twenty years ago. Many of the items related to my mother who had died shortly before.
There were dozens of pairs of shoes, each pair in its own clear plastic shoe box. There were lots of my mother's clothes. There were glasses and dishes and odds and ends of furniture. Each one was reviewed. Some things went to charity, some to the dumpster, and a few were set aside to ship to my sister's place in California.
Sometimes a piece would spark powerful memories. There was an old yellow step-stool/chair that had been in my mother's kitchens since the fifties. She bought it when she painted the parsonage kitchen yellow, much to the chagrin of some Pillars of the Church who thought that a decorous white was the only proper color for a parsonage kitchen.
We remembered how Mom so often did things like that, things that challenged convention. We also remembered far more personal and less cosmic things.
I remembered the number of times I'd climbed up on that chair, usually trying to get something that was forbidden to me. I remembered how many times I'd fallen off the stool and how often I tried cover up the evidence of my wrong-doing so Mom wouldn't find out.
As much memory as that stool evoked, it still went to the dump. My mother's wedding dress, on the other hand was carefully packed for shipment to California. That's one of the things you keep.
We all keep special things. My sister has my mother's wedding dress. I have my father's decorations and his letters from the poet Edwin Markham. Barbara has a tape of special messages my father left on her answering machine at the San Francisco Opera.
Sometimes we use those physical memory-enhancers informally, like the ring that was my father's that I wear every day. Sometimes we do it formally with books full of pictures and documents that enrich our memories.
Scrap books and photo albums become our own, personal and family time capsules. They remind us of people and places we might forget otherwise. They show us the quaint and curious costumes we used to wear and the many interesting ways we fixed our hair in bygone days.
As good as physical objects are at keeping memories fresh, rituals are far more powerful. We do things and go to places that connect us to the things that we value and love. The service for the Burial of the Dead is a ritual for believers. So, for my family, is the visit to Niederstein's after a burial.
The Lutheran Cemetery has been in Middle Village since the 1850's when the midtown churches began closing their church yards to further burials. Niederstein's has been there almost as long. Generations have come to bury their dead and followed the service with a meal and remembrance, just as we did this past Saturday. Just as my father and his family probably did 84 years before.
For years I thought I wanted to be cremated and have my ashes scattered, but now I have a different sense of the importance of place in the great circle of time and memory. When my grandsons are my age, I want them to be able to come to a place that helps them feel the memories and reach out in their minds to ancestors they never met.
They can wind their way to the gravesites then and examine the stones, each one with a story. Then, perhaps, if it is still there, they can find their way to Niederstein's for food and drink and stories and laughter as they touch the stars of memory.
