Gravestone of Nicholas Daniel Schmaltz,
my fraternal grandfather

" … grateful for the one day each year reserved for performing the obligatorily impossible …"

I didn't make the funeral. I was living in Seattle on an unheated sleeping porch with my to-be wife. Those days, I traveled by thumb, taking to an onramp or highway verge and sticking out my thumb. It took about half a day to travel back home that way and another half day to return. I begged off so I didn't see where they'd buried my grandpa Nick. We were not close. He and my father had a prickly history and a distant relationship, which rubbed off on the kids. When I was in high school, he and his second wife lived almost across the street from my best friend's house, but I rarely stopped by. Later, they relocated to be closer to her daughter’s family. Nick had been in failing health when he died, not unexpectedly, just a year older than I am today. He became history, but I was not there to witness his inauguration.

The Muse had been after me for years to drive up to visit his grave. I'd never found it convenient. I don't casually visit my pasts. I approach them with purpose once I'm convinced I deserve access. I can see my great-great-grandmother Maria's grave from the street whenever I drive past the local boneyard, and I often greet her as I pass, but I only enter that cemetery on Memorial Day. I come with flowers and some spray to chase away the lichens and moss, determined to make her anonymous. Yesterday, I finally found a story that convinced us both that I could gracefully visit the grave of that man whose funeral I was too self-absorbed to hitchhike three hundred miles to attend. I'd spent that day wandering around Seattle's Arboretum, a massive park with ancient trees, each labeled. I'd considered life, mine and his, perhaps to assuage my guilt at begging off on attending his funeral. I've always regretted avoiding that gathering.

The Muse and I dressed up our visit to history with a double premise. The forest between The Villa Vatta Schmaltz and the Summerville cemetery was supposed to be brimming with morels this fine, damp mushroom season, so we'd stop along the way and wander that particular sort of aimlessly to see if we might muster up some treasure. I chose back roads, decent enough gravel and dirt tracks affording spectacular views, and wildflowers-filled meadows. It seemed as if we'd happened onto a road through heaven as we wended our way upward. We eventually found our way to a snowbank blocking our route. A truck with a horse trailer was already stuck in that snow, and he would not be going any further. After asking if he needed help and him refusing, we turned around and continued wending our way back down and into Summerville. We quickly found the cemetery, which was surprisingly huge given that the city limit sign claimed fewer than three hundred inhabitants.

The Muse and I have a tactic that tends to work for us. She'll access the Find A Grave website, hoping to find a location mentioned or, lacking that, perhaps a picture of the stone. She found a photo, so we knew what we were looking for. We spread out and started walking. Only a few stones matched the color and dimensions of our target stone. In fewer than ten minutes, The Muse hollered across the graves. She'd found it!

I'd never had an intimate or personal conversation with this grandfather, so it didn't seem appropriate for me to start that then. I brushed back some grass clippings and pulled a dandelion rooted in one of the canisters intended to hold flowers. They were buried next to my step-grandmother's daughter and husband, doubtless buried in their family plot. He'd begun life in Devil's Lake, North Dakota, and left it in Summerville, Oregon, far away from other family and friends. He'd been history for fifty-one years before I finally found my way to his final resting place. I looked around for the flowers I'd picked that morning before we left and could not find them. I had inexplicably become an old man myself, forgetfully remembering, VisitingHistory just before I join the throng that has already exited before me.

We found morels, a magical experience, gifts from gods or fairies. We'd driven through a world overwhelmed by Spring to tarry briefly on our mission to perform the obligatorily impossible. Nobody ever successfully ends up actually VisitingHistory, for history isn't accessible to anybody here. I managed to dredge up a story or two—they're referred to as memories—though memories hardly qualify as history, either. I do what I can do. Where I once hitchhiked, I now drive. Where I once had the luxury of declining to attend some history in the making, I now can only forget to bring the flowers I'd intended to leave in homage.

History seems a mess from here. Since we were near, The Muse hinted that we could visit where my great-great-grandmother Mariah's sister died of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever during that ill-fated attempt to make it to the end of the Oregon Trail. She fiddled with her phone a bit before acknowledging that she'd died before there was a town or cemetery there. Her history holds no physical place or stone. We fled home, back to the future which we still inhabit. A time will come when we dissolve into pure past, where only reinterpretation will change anything we've cast. I'm grateful for the one day each year reserved for performing the obligatorily impossible, for VisitingHistory and remembering, even though remembering will never be history itself.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Fambly, #PureSchmaltz