Mom, page 4
A private service on a boat
Mom didn't want a cemetery plot waiting for her. She didn't want a headstone. She didn't like memorial services. The memorial she held for our father she held in her living room privately for immediate family members. If she had had any idea I might post a memorial on the Internet, she might have requested that I not do that too. But she didn't. This is how I communicate. And she never said not to do this. So I'm doing it. I think Dad would have been tickled with it.
She used tell us to just throw her ashes in the river, which was a favorite place for her. After her parents were gone and the family stopped meeting on Lake Erie summers, we discovered the Ohio River. A remote sandy beach, accessible only by water for all practical purposes, was where we began spending weekends in our boat. She had fond memories of those years and wanted to go back there. So my wife and I held our own service on the back of our boat. My brother eventually intends to hold one on the same family boat that we grew up water skiing behind. He intends his to be, as mine was, overlooking the beach where we used to set up a semi permanent camp every summer.
That his service will not be occurring for a while, partly because the old family boat is in moth balls, fits with tradition. In our family, if your birthday were in January and the family were going to meet for dinner for your birthday, the event might take place in May or June. When it gracefully could be worked out, when everyone was in town, when the desired reservations could be gotten, it happened. No one minded that, but Mom was the principle reason that things proceeded on that schedule, so it is fitting that his service unfold in that way as well.
Her ashes were not thrown in the river though. After Dad was gone, my mother and brother decided Dad really would like to be where his parents were. So my mother and brother bought a plot for him at Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum. When I learned that, I secretly bought the plots around it.
Mom hadn't wanted plots for anyone, and especially didn't want one waiting for her, but a couple of years after Dad was gone she wanted to be taken to his.
Then on veterans day one year she hinted that it would be nice if someone put flags on Dad's marker. I did that and showed her photos of it. She was so happy that I had done that, that I began to revise my thoughts about where to put
her. If Dad had been "thrown in the river" we would have done that with her as well. But his urn is in a spot in Spring Grove Cemetery, so we put Mom next to him there.
We inadvertently got her permission to do that. During her last year, she and I were at the funeral of my sister's mother-in-law in that same cemetery. Mom wanted to find Dad's marker. We did. As she was looking at it, she asked, "Did you buy all the spots around Dad?"
After a brief pause resulting from having been discovered, I said, "Yes. I did."
"I just was noticing that all the spots in the area were filled except for the spots immediately surrounding Dad. And I was wondering how that could be. . . Well, that's O.K. If you want to put me here, that's O.K."
Mrs. Marjory Moore Selmeier
May 2, 1922 - June 6, 2003
A spot in Spring Grove
My parents and my father's parents are in Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum, a 700 acre masterwork of landscaping art designed in the early 1800s to equal the most beautiful cemeteries in the world, many of which were visited by its planners as a foundation for this one. In that beautiful setting Dad's parents had wanted to build a private mausoleum with a lobby where we could visit on weekends. Mom spoke about talking them out of it.
Dad had a completely different philosophy on this than his parents. He found the most frugal preplanning package he could (Section 134, Lot
34). With two sons with artistic bents and debilitating problems with depression (something picked up in varying degrees by 4 of the 5 male descendants of Mom and her sisters), he could have been thinking of preserving the savings for them to help get them through.
Interestingly, he is just down a slope from this statue of Johnny Appleseed, the historical figure he told me about more often than any other when I was growing up.
There really was a Johnny Appleseed. Appleseed (an acquired name) saw what territory the settlers would settle next and knew they would need to buy plant stock when they got here. He came to our part of the wilderness and established nurseries of fruit trees years in advance so that they would be mature enough to be useful when the settlers arrived. Dad told versions of the story that were more mythical. He had an affinity for the character who, in his version, through effort, foresight and selflessness helped pave the way for future generations. Perhaps like preserving wealth for the next generation by picking the most frugal preplanning package.
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