As a gift one year, an eminently practical cousin presented my family with five funeral plots in a Cape Cod cemetery — sufficient for Mom and Dad, my two siblings and me. As Cousin Nina told my father, "they were cheaper by the dozen," so she had purchased not five but 12, giving the rest to other cousins. I was 11 at the time.
Nina was a bit of an outlier in our family, which was never known for dwelling on final dispositions. In fact, my journalist father, who harangued me when growing up about the proper use of tenses and moods, would later in life preface any mention of his own passing with "If I die…" To which I had the satisfaction of responding that this was no time for the subjunctive, "Dad, it's when, not if."
But it wasn't just denial that stood in the way of us choosing a final resting place; my parents also had little tradition to go on. My maternal grandparents were buried deep in a Queens mausoleum that I've never visited; my father's father had his ashes buried under one of his prize rose bushes in the backyard of a house now owned by God knows who. My other grandmother? Soon after dying, she was dispatched to New York University's medical residents.
On this subject, I am a very different beast from my parents. Perhaps because I'd been given a cancer diagnosis early in life or because I'm a planner par excellence, I've long had a manila folder in my desk called "Notes for SP Funeral/Memorial."
Among the detritus is a program from a friend's gorgeous church wedding; it's there because I'd like to make sure my funeral is held there. Then there's a Post-it that says I want "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" theme song ("Who can take a nothing day….") played. Oh, and there's a photograph of the Arlington National Cemetery grave markers for President and Mrs. Kennedy, specifying that my stone be from the same Massachusetts foundry.
By 35, I had planned my last party. My after-party, however, remained as opaque as my parents'. None of us were planning to use Nina's gift, but I had nowhere else in mind as my final resting place.
Until one day in Sag Harbor, N.Y., an old whaling village where as a child I'd had happy memories of Fourth of July parades and strawberry shortcake. Drawn there again as an adult, I drove past a cemetery called Oakland. A local poet described it like this: "I have stood alone and quiet in the filtered sunlight beneath the old trees, listening to the sighing winds and the chattering of birds …" Eureka.
Walking the grounds, I discovered that many notables had been interred there: the choreographer George Balanchine; two Iranian princes; and a Revolutionary War hero, David Hand, who is buried with his five wives. I put in a call to ask about the availability of plots, and a Mr. Yardley said they still had some in the original burial ground – although like everything in the Hamptons nowadays, they were "adding on."
We scheduled a visit. My parents canceled. ("We need to take the dog to the vet.") We rescheduled; they canceled again. ("Oh no, we're double booked.") On the fourth try, we made it out there: Mom, Dad, my sister Julie (and her wife) and me. (My brother and his wife didn't want any part of this real estate "deal.")
In the dead of winter, Mr. Yardley walked us to a site where, lo and behold, we could have six plots for $600 apiece — cheaper by the half-dozen in this case, and surely the best real estate deal on the East End.
Mom, who was complaining that her feet were "frostbitten," was willing to say yes if it got us closer to lunch and a gimlet. I could see Dad was ambivalent, not as much about Oakland but about dying. As is customary for him, he took off to wander a bit, heading down toward the new "development." Ten minutes later, he returned and said: "O.K., we'll do it. I saw Clay Felker's grave marker over there. This is a good 'hood for me." Dad was satisfied to share his final quarters in the company of the founder and editor of New York magazine.
And so we agreed to buy all six plots. My mom especially liked the notion that – eventually – we'd all be together again. A decade later, we're all still here, not there, with the deed to my plot in my manila folder. Yes, we all now have a shady place to call home for eternity. Older and more like my dad these days, I've also caught myself misusing my tenses, "If I die…."
I guess old subjunctives die hard.
Steven Petrow is a writer who lives in Hillsborough, N.C.
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