2008

Norma walked up the wooden stairs to Aunt Elner’s old house and looked around. It didn’t look the same. The old fig tree in the side yard that Aunt Elner had fallen out of looked a little weary. And the dark green plastic chairs from Walmart that Luther and Bobby Jo Griggs had out on the porch did not lend themselves to the charm of the house. Aunt Elner had had a white iron glider swing with yellow and white polka-dotted cushions and two white chairs on the porch, and it had looked so cheery. Oh, well, it’s their house now. Norma knocked on the screen door, but nobody was home. She saw through the door that the cat cage sitting in the hall had a note attached. Sonny, Aunt Elner’s orange cat, was inside the cage. She went in and read the note:

Had to run, Norma. Here he is.

—Bobby Jo

Norma picked up the cat and drove over to the cemetery. When she reached Aunt Elner’s grave, she noticed a new pot of plastic yellow flowers someone had left. She knew it must have been Tot. She meant well, but Lord, they were ugly. She moved them just a little to the side and said, “Hello, Aunt Elner, it’s Norma. I don’t know if you remember or not, but today is your birthday. So happy birthday! Macky and Linda send you their best wishes. I’ve brought you some fresh flowers, and I also brought Sonny out here to see you. I knew you’d like that.” She put the cat down on the grave, facing the tombstone. Sonny seemed only somewhat interested in where he was.

Norma then pulled a small tin container out of the ground, walked over to the faucet, and filled it with water. As she was arranging the flowers, she continued talking. “You know, Aunt Elner, when you were still alive, you used to get on my nerves so bad calling night and day, asking all your crazy questions, but now that you’re gone, you have no idea how much I miss you. I must go to the phone ten times a day to call you. And when our phone rings, my first thought is, ‘Oh, that’s Aunt Elner calling,’ but, of course, it isn’t.” She sighed. “I knew I’d miss you. I just didn’t know how much. Macky, too…he misses not having coffee with you every morning….Well, I’m going to run over to Mother and Daddy’s plot and say hello, but I’m going to leave Sonny to visit with you for a while.”

Every time Norma came out to the cemetery, she was appalled at how the look of it had changed and not for the better. The beautiful wooden arch with the carved flowers had been knocked down by the tornado and had never been replaced. The roads needed repaving, and the grass was getting spotty. She remembered when it was all lush green grass, and the whole cemetery was full of fresh flowers, neatly arranged. Today she saw that somebody had left their old potato chip bag on the ground.

And the headstones! Norma knew that men sometimes included a small Masonic symbol on their gravestones or a small insignia of a military branch they’d served in, but since when was a carving of an eighteen-wheeler truck or a motorcycle considered a proper gravestone motif? There were just no guidelines or rules anymore or any kind of cohesive look to the place. It was all a mishmash. A bench here, a round ball here, a new, large shiny black headstone next to a small cement sheep from the twenties. It was like putting a McDonald’s next to a lovely home.

She really was not a snob. Norma understood not being able to afford things, but it was getting harder every day to hold on to whatever semblance of decorum and civility was left in the world, especially with all the insane things going on on the TV all day. And now the one place you’d think you could depend on for peace and quiet and beauty was not the same. But what could she do? People had even started putting snapshots of themselves on their gravestones. It was so unnerving to walk by and see dead people smiling at you. How did they do it? She wouldn’t know how to begin to pick out a picture of herself that she would want people to see forever.

And then, of course, there was Harold Wiggler’s gravestone inscription that read “Hey, it’s dark in here. Somebody switch on the light.” It was so horrible in so many ways; she couldn’t even begin to think about it. She always avoided row 12, if she could possibly help it. She did not find the inscription the least bit funny. To Norma, death was not a joke, and in Harold’s case, it wasn’t even a funny joke.

After she had visited her parents’ graves, Norma came back, picked up Sonny, said goodbye to Aunt Elner, and went on her way.

—

AFTER NORMA LEFT, Elner said to her neighbor Ruby Robinson, “Old Sonny looked good, didn’t he?”

“He did, if you like cats, I guess. But wasn’t it sweet of Norma to remember your birthday?”

“It was.”

“She really misses you.”

“And I miss her. She’s a sweet girl. She tries so hard, but sometimes her nerves just run away with her.”

“Oh, I know. I think she’s the one person who taking a little drink once in a while might help.”