The Tremper children- Elsie, Carson, Tobin, and Brycen- helping their elderly great uncle clean off family grave markers at Belmont Memorial Park in Fresno.
At the behest of my mother, this last weekend we went around to the local graveyards containing the mortal remains of past generations of family members. This was surprising, as my mother, heretofore, has not been a hunter of tombs, but with my eldest nephew- her grandson- and his four children- her great grandchildren- in tow, we set out.
Surprising, too, that my great nieces and nephews, ages 12, 9, 7, and 5 greatly enjoyed themselves. Mind you, they didn’t ask penetrating questions about their local forebears, but that this was an all-day event involving 4 cemeteries and that they helped clean and decorate every single family grave marker- well, let’s say that by at least this objective measure, they were engaged with what went on.
Me, too. Some of the graves I hadn’t been to in nearly 50 years, but in my very young life, it was with my own grandmother an annual event. She was a tiny and rather round lady, but she nevertheless was able to make and place a floral display on every marker. And no silk flowers she. Her own bountiful flower garden provided ample blooms, making before we set out the trunk of my grandfather’s Oldsmobile 98 a sight to behold.
Funny with all this, though, given the business we’re in, I think quite a bit differently about heritage. On the one hand, I value it and the material culture that is the product of heritage. On the other, I realize that we are all of us mortal, and that generations and the memory of man pass quickly. Consequently, when I see grave markers that were intended to if not to actually immortalize then to at least lionize and extend the mortality of those memorialized I realize how ultimately futile the effort is. When we decorated the grave of my great great grandmother, whose memory was sacred to my own grandmother, whose memory is sacred to me, it was sad to see that it was the only grave nearabouts that was decorated. My great great grandmother, a remarkable woman who crossed the continent with her husband in a wagon pulled by a single yoke of oxen, whose memory has by now nearly faded into the mists of time.
Or has it? With our jaunt to the graveyards last Saturday, the most recent generation of my family will now have some sense of their own heritage. What will it gain them, I wonder? It might only be the prospect of an event occurring no more than annually, performed out of some vague sense of obligation to someone they once knew and esteemed. Perhaps though it will also lend their lives a sense of greater depth and meaning, with the knowledge that their here and now was at least partly formed by others known to them at a remove of sometimes a number of generations. Perhaps this will then form something of a larger philosophy, that in fact they are connected with a world broader and more significant than those satisfactions immediately gained by watching TV or playing video games or sending text messages.