Marking Your Son's Grave Part 2

i turn away from the woman, whom i will eventually find out is named Peachie, and look at the display of granite markers, which--by contrast--look so beautiful and natural and sparkly through my tears, but remain unavailable to me because Forest Lawn only accepts bronze markers. and not the type of bronze markers that sit on granite slabs either.

i'm partial to granite. i spent my formative years in the Granite State. i swam in granite quarries in the Granite State (those quarries were so cold and so deep; we called one the Blue Quarry and one the Green Quarry due to the color the water seemed as it reflected the stone far below). recently i learned while traipsing around Scottish cemeteries that lime stone and most other stone markers simply flake away over decades and centuries and with the flaking stone goes the lettering and all mention and memory of the departed. and i learn that granite, next to diamond, is the strongest mineral. i really want granite.

i've composed myself finally and sit down to look at the brochure again, at the few choices i have been given. gearey arrives. i burst into tears because i am feeling so sorry for myself and for him and for our meager choices and for our poor baby underneath the ground. i ask Peachie if she has any tissue and she brings me a role of toilet paper and i'm so about taking care of people that i tell her, "it's all right, it's what i use at home," which is not always true, before she has completed her brief sentence of apology.

i explain as best i can to gearey about the frame edges (brightly polished or shit brown paint) and the lines (you can't get a nice line in the right place without something ugly next to it) and the paint (tan, brown, chocolate, and a pretty-though-inappropriate green) and the texture (see description in Part 1) and we flip through the limited pages of limited choices. we find some pictures with the frame part of the marker that look so much better, and we tell Peachie that we like these--but are told they are actually pictures of the stone moulds in which the bronze is cast. simple stone marker moulds. we agree with a look that we'd like the mould on the grave much better than any painted or shined up bronze job. and we exchange a few more looks as we peruse markers that would be fine without the sculpted rose or the big cross or the figure of someone probably very holy in front of Mt. Ararat who--because of the casting--looks like a beggar with his eyes gouged out. and i remember fondly that gearey and i always had the same taste. and we always had the same contempt for bad taste. and we always had a lot of fun feeling superior to the creators of bad taste. and here we were facing our comeuppance, the distinct possibility that there was NO WAY TO MARK OUR SON'S GRAVE WITH TASTE AND DIGNITY.

end of Part 2.

to be continued . . .