A BAG of MARBLES

"When you feel like you're drowning in life, know that your lifeguard walks on water.." -Psalm 144

She had driven the road many times before. I know. She usually dragged me with her.  She would stop at the entrance and scan the horizon .

It was littered with gravestones, monuments, open graves, dirt covered graves. Old and new flowers. Lots of plastic ones. 

A few cars were parked along the gravel path. A few people stood  here and there, or wandering about.

She took a deep breath and drove into the Cemetery.

It was a Sunday in March. The one  day we  came to visit. The one day I brought my marbles to leave, one by one,  on the gravestones as we walked by.“To talk to dead people,” my mother would say to lighten  the mood. I clanked the bag of marbles.

Our yearly trek to see the dead people. Grasping the bag tightly, I jumped down from the parked car. My mother took a plaid wool blanket from the back and we were off.

My mother knew quite a few of them. There was Miss Cora and her husband, Reg.  Died of a broken heart. The both of them. But not for each other. Buried for all time. Together. My mother hoped they were doing well. Wherever they happened to be. 

We stopped at a granite angel. It marked the place of one  cranky old neighbour. He used to yell across the way at us. One day, he was felled by one of his own pine trees. Uprooted in a storm. Squashed him well and good. My mother sniffed at the stone angel. 

Then we came to two brass plaques dug into the ground at the back fence. My grandparents. My mother stopped at them. She laid down the plaid blanket and  sat down . She started talking. Told them how we were, and about how big I had become.  

I left  to run thru the graves. The wind had kicked up. I placed a marble on each gravestone, or plaque, I passed. I had six left.

My mother stood and shook the blanket. My grandfather had brought it all the way from Scotland back in the 40’s. I still have it to this day. I took two marbles and put them on their plaques. 

My mother  headed for a smaller grave, with only a plastic label. It was my dad’s grave. It was under one of the giant maple trees. The March wind  blew her hair from its clips as she knelt on the ground , no blanket. 

She hesitated. 

Then she talked to him. She was not sad. But her heart was. He’d only been gone about ten years. 

To this day, I don ‘t know exactly what she said to him. She let him  know  she missed him. Life was moving on. I was bored. I twirled  in the wind.

Then  grey clouds hunkered down, and  March rains opened up. We grabbed the plaid blanket and headed for the car. That day, I  turned back. Headed to his grave and left the last four marbles on the plastic label. For him. 

Some twenty years later, we buried my mother beside him. She died the end of March, on the same day he did, way back when. And now on the same stormy month they were together again. 

       I left them a bag of marbles …..Just in case…

 Photographs 2022