Plain Lawn Cemetery, Old Country Road

On another journey to carry out my mother's last wishes. This was item number four; item number one was "Cheer Up!"

I spend the morning at the courthouse with the probate clerk, a lovely woman with the aspect of a black sorority sister and kindergarden teacher rolled into one. As she reviews the documents, she keeps saying, "Oh, good, very good! You've done a really good job!" in a soothing voice. Feeling like I am back in preschool is disconcerting, especially as aspects of my complicated parentage arise. At least for this matter, there is only one other sibling, instead of seven.

Next stop, Plain Lawn Cemetery, arguably the smallest cemetery in New York state that is still in operation. The once bucolic eponymous 'Old Country Road' is now covered with strip malls instead of pine trees, and the world's largest Chinese restaurant is visible through the stained glass windows of the chapel. The entire place is about the size of a city block.

Between two huge mauseleums of rose marble stands a tiny white bungalow with green trim -- the office. Inside the office are two women with deeply lined faces framed by tiny fluffs of permed auburn hair sitting at desks buried under mounds of paper. One of them types ceaselessly on an IBM Selectric next to a desk top copier and doesn't look up the entire time I am there. Mrs. Statton, who attends to the public, locates single niches for me on handwritten charts that are written on the backs of legal size manilla folders. She points out the few they have left with gnarled fingers.

This is one of those moments in wish fulfillment when you seriously want to change course. I didn't when we stood by our DNR order in the hospital as my mother's heart slowed to a halt. I didn't when we had no body or flowers or cremains at the funeral and my aunts spluttered, "No body? No body! But..!" As I stood in that office where nothing had changed since my grandmother was buried in 1973 in that tiny, combustion choked cemetery, I almost turned around and left the very nice Mrs. Statton and her ancient friend behind. I wanted my mom to be in a nice place with pretty plantings and computers, far off a main road and in a quiet corner under a tree. Someplace with rolling green hills, maybe. In a town that didn't have the unfortunate name of 'Hicksville.' One of those big cemeteries with tombstones in Chinese and stars of David next to the crosses and angels. Where the chapel didn't have a dingy pleather sofa in the shape of a boomerang with mirrored coffee tables.

Manilla folder charts in hand, I go to look at the niches. Obviously not facing the road, facing the cemetery, but in which direction? Since the reason my mother wanted to be interred here was because my father was, I decide to ask Mrs. Statton for directions to his gravesite.

My father died in 1997, and was buried with my grandmother. In 1999, her sister, my Aunt May, was buried in that grave as well. I gave Mrs. Statton my grandmother's name, Carmen Cleoptra (Doyle) Dolly, since she was the first one buried there. First Mrs. Statton looks in a dusty blue ledger, and finds my grandmother's name. I notice that the other names around Carmen Dolly also have Brooklyn addresses in Bed Stuy and Fort Greene, and wonder if this cemetery had sold plots to members of the same community. All these Brooklynites buried out in the country.

Then, she looks in her card catalogue, and finds my grandmother cross referenced to my father and aunt. There is a little confusion with the Doyles and Dollys but we get it straightened out and she sends me back out into the cold, with more manilla charts in hand.

I walk to the very back of the cemetery, and in a quiet spot in the "Garden of Memories," where the only markers allowed are bronze plaques, I find their gravesite. There is a big bronze plaque with a permanent vase at the top for flowers, but now filled with ice and snow. Underneath are two names: Carmen Cleopatra Dolly and Ralph Errol Dolly. And nothing else.

I dig around in the grass perplexed, looking for Aunt May's marker. I even brush the dirt off the neighboring plaques, which have been covered by a recent burial, hoping, as I did this, that my foot would not be the only way the dirt strewn about was removed. Nothing.

I stand and look back at the wall of niches to line up the one I will choose for my mother, and then walk back to the little white and green house, my mind racing. My half sisters had taken care of Aunt May's burial arrangements, using their legitimacy to freeze us out of the proceedings. They had sold the house she had lived in, a huge brownstone in Bed Stuy, so money was not a question. And yet, why was there no marker for Aunt May?

I feel guilty for not coming before. I had wanted to visit this grave, but didn't ask my mother when she was alive for fear of reminding her of the terrible loss of my father. My family doesn't have a tradition of visiting gravesites, so it is no surprise to me that no one has noticed.

"Are you sure that May Doyle was buried there" I ask Mrs. Statton.

"Oh, positive, this is the date?" It is.

"But there is no marker for my aunt."

'Well," she sighs, sitting back in her chair, as though she has seen this all before. "The original plate has space for two names. If there are additional burials, a new plaque has to be purchased." She holds my gaze steadily. "Do you want to put your mother in the site? There is room for one more urn." And have more sister drama?

"No, thanks, she requested the columberium." I told her which one I wanted, signed the contract, and ordered the plaque for my mom.

"Do you want the cross? There's a cross on it. I ask because sometimes people," she shrugs, "don't want the cross."

"No, the cross is fine."

"No cross?"

"The cross is fine."

"Oh. A woman came in here once and saw the cross in the chapel, you know the stained glass window? And she said, 'Is that a cross?' And I says, 'Yeah,' and she says, 'I can't...I just can't...' And I asks her, I asks, 'Are you Jewish?' and she says, 'Yes.' She went somewhere else. You know, they can't have the cross, they can't have the cross."

"I guess that is why," I say, "there are other cemeteries."

I bid her and her ancient friend goodbye and take off down Old Country Road, back to the city.