August 25, 2023
It had been a long time since Kathy visited her parents’ grave, which rested on a hill overlooking the Housatonic River, flowing gently to Long Island Sound. That spring afternoon there were goldfinches twittering in the trees as the sun filtered through the branches and onto the granite stone that said, “In God’s Care,” with a rosary wrapped around a cross.
She hadn’t known this much peace for a long time. Why had she stayed away? She thought she was alone until she heard someone talking. It was an elderly man 20 feet away in a folding lawn chair, talking to the grave in front of him.
Her heart went out to him. It had to be his wife’s grave, and judging from its appearance, it was not a new one. He probably came here regularly to discuss his life now that she was gone.
Seeing him brought back memories of when she was a child, and her mother would take her and her sister every Sunday after Mass to St. Michael Cemetery in Stratford, where they would walk between the gravestones until they reached her grandparents’ grave. After they tended to the flowers, got water from the faucet nearby, and said a few prayers, they would leave and visit her other grandparents’ grave with a weathered statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on top of it.
Even though she had other things she wanted to do on Sunday, her mother politely but firmly explained it was their obligation to visit their family members. As reasonable as that sounded, most of her life she hadn’t visited her parents and a feeling of regret passed through her. She quickly realized that the “obligation” her mother referred to was really an important ritual that brought her healing graces.
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