02-Peggy’s grave
Peggy’s obituary said Kamienski Funeral Home in Garfield had handled her funeral arrangements and
she was buried St. Michael’s Cemetery in South Hackensack. She was a
regular member of either the Garfield or Wallington Presbyterian Churches
That portion of South Hackensack abutted Garfield and Lodi
and was only a few blocks away from the River Drive strip mall where I worked
part time in Fotomat. It was also near Home Liquor, where she frequently
stopped to buy champaign and Vodka on her way home from work.
Having lived in the area for almost two decades, I had
passed this place more than a hundred times without noticing it, I’d even
jogged passed it, and worked up the road from it in both directions. Indeed,
one small irony I did not realize until later was the fact that Peggy’s grave
when I found it was within eye sight of the Stage Coach Inn, one of the Lodi
strip clubs Peggy had danced in when I first met her.
Although my family had lived in and died in Lodi, too, their
remains were located in an older cemetery on the far side of the nearby
college, and even there I struggled sometimes to find the right grave.
Although a small cemetery there were hundreds of graves.
I started at one end and began to weave through the aisles,
hoping the whole thing was wrong.
The fact that I had come eleven years after her burial only
complicated matters. There was no fresh dug soil to provide me with clues to
which stone her remains rested under. I didn’t know if she had a big store or a
small stone or was buried alone or with some family plot. So, I could not
afford to overlook any of them, and so twisted and turned, my eyes straining to
make out the complicated letters that made up the Polish and Ukraine names for
the exact combination that made up hers.
Like a fool, I had come with the mistaken notion that I
would have no trouble finding her grave. Somehow fate would lend its hand and
point me in the right direction or Peggy’s spirit would forgive me for the
slights Peggy in life never had.
So up and down the rows of grave stones I walked, growing
older and more desperate for a toilet, promising Peggy’s spirit that I would
not give up until I found the grave, despite my bladder.
This was the Sunday before Christmas and although the
cemetery had an office that included public toilets, both were closed.
While St. Michael’s was not large, its arrangements of
graves were complicated, and moving up and down the uneven rows, I was never
quite sure if I had missed the one with Peggy’s name on it., and there were
enough graves to require a significant amount of walking.
Down deep, I couldn’t believe Peggy was dead. She was one of
those bigger-than-life people that I hoped could overcome all obstacles and
live forever, though I knew from the start that she could come to no other end
than the one she did.
Perhaps I had selfish motives for coming on that cold Sunday
morning, some deep need to see Peggy settled in one immovable place after she
had lived her life as a free spirit. Perhaps I just needed proof, to see the
grave and feel her name engraved in stone for it to feel real to me. The fact
that her ghost still haunted me a whole quarter century after we went out is
testimony to how powerful a being she was.
I kept remembering the roses I had seen once withering on
her kitchen table when she still lived on Harrison Avenue, in Lodi, back in 1987.
During that time, I knew, however, Peggy would not age
gracefully and the fact that she decided to end her life before her 40th
birthday made sense to him, even if it also caused great pain.
But I also miscalculated back then, thinking that I could
“save” her from herself, and in making the attempt managed to make something of
a fool of myself.
It was not a long relationship. I first became aware of
Peggy in the fall of 1986, just at the moment when her precious New York Giants
were starting their successful march to the Super Bowl, and it ended in late
May on her 28th birthday, marking the most emotional eight months of my life,
full of passion and panic, the like of which I had not felt before or since,
the memory of which remains vivid in me as if these events had just happened.
As determined as I was to find her grave, the urgency of my
bladder won the day, and I only covered about half the cemetery when I surrendered
to the cold and the need to find a toilet, vowing to resume my search on another
day.
On Monday morning, I called the caretaker, who verified the
fact that she was indeed buried there.
“Come to Felican College gate,” he told me. “She’s in Section
B. If you park in front of an old building, it’s immediately to the left. She
is in plot 491. Grave 2.”
I returned to the cemetery just before Christmas, followed
the instructions, and much to my dismay, found the grave I had searched do
desperately for the previous week.
It was here grandparents grave that include Peggy’s name as
well as the name of her older sister, Susan, even though Susan had not yet died
at that time. Later, in subsequent visits, I would see other names added to the
grave that included Peggy’s father’s, and finally, the death date of Susan.
I put the Christmas wreath down in front of it, and simply stood
there, staring at the names, and then as the expanse of the cemetery where
other families were visiting their deceased relatives and laying their wreaths.
There was no more denying it. Peggy was dead.
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