When Even the Dead Ate Well

After the scary fun and games of All Hallow's Eve, came the solemnity of All Saints Day on Nov. 1. Except, in these parts, the day wasn't all that solemn.

The traditional visit to the cemetery to venerate the dead, was a family event. And like most family events it was, well, kind of fun actually.

On All Saints (or the Saturday before depending on when it fell), my grandmother, mother, aunts and a motley crew of grandchildren, descended on the Biloxi Cemetery, armed with rakes, brooms, pruning shears, paint brushes and trash bags, to tend to the family plots. The plot where my grandpa and my mother's little brother, Mato Junior, (and later nona and Aunt Marie) were buried was located in the shade of a giant Southern oak tree.

We pulled up oak saplings, raked acorn shells, whitewashed the plot's cement border and placed flowers ( usually my Aunt Marie's favorite purple mums) in the stone vase between the large double head-stones. Aunt Marie also buried a few pieces of Grandpa's favorite candy-- Hershey kisses -- at the base of his stone.

The restless kids ran up and down the paths visiting our "favorite" graves and tombs -- those with wrought iron gates, portraits embedded in the stones and fancy statuary. The saddest ones were the children's graves with their chubby little angel and sleeping lamb statues.

With the other kids visiting the cemetery, we played tag and hide and seek among the tombs and oak trees, until our moms called us back to picnic graveside on root-beer floats, onion rings, and chili dogs that my Aunt Marie bought from the A&W root beer stand just around the corner.

After we finished sprucing up our family plot, we placed a small bouquet of camellias on the mysterious grave next to it. The gentleman died in 1932. No one knew who he was; he did not have a local surname. His was the only grave in a large plot. We weren't sure if he had a family who left after he died or if he never had a family. My mother was always bothered by his lonely, untended grave.

We drove across Irish Hill Drive and visited the graves of my grandmother's parents, grandmother and little brother and sister. We strolled slowly around the cemetery, visiting with others on cemetery duty, and stopping to admire the newly spruced up graves and share reminisces of old friends, neighbors, relatives, teachers, who had passed on.

After we left in late afternoon, our duty done for another year, I always imagined the souls of the departed congregating in the deepening shadows to commiserate about the weather, admire each other's freshly cleaned graves and flowers and remark on the size of the children and passage of time -- just as they had in life.

It was all very comforting and cozy