Grave Marker

My mother came into town yesterday in part because she wanted to go here, to the cemetery to visit my younger brother's grave.



That's a photo of his gravesite (retouched to remove our family name, though I don't particularly care if you happen to know it). I find it funny that my father, who I haven't spoken to in--what?--almost twenty years (and who didn't recognize me at my brother's funeral) ordered and paid for the grave marker and got my brother's name wrong. (Officially, my brother's name was Matthew Scott, not Scott Matthew. The name was, I think, a compromise between grandmothers (I'm sure my mother will correct me if I'm wrong about that), one grandmother got to pick the first name and the other grandmother got to pick the middle name. We never called him by his first name, though, we always called him Scott.

Actually, I never called him Scott. I always called him Scotty. It seems like such a small distinction, but I was so used to calling him Scotty that a friend onced asked me, "How's Scott?" and I was, like, "Scott who? I don't know any Scott." And my friend was, all, "Your brother Scott." And I was, like, "Oh, you mean Scotty. He's fine.")

As a continuation of the strangeness of the grave marker, my father added my brother's childhood nickname "Papas." My mother insists that it's actually spelled "Pappas," but I'm not getting involved in that. (My parents are divorced. Big surprise, huh?)

Anyway, I was living in Japan when my brother died, and I returned home for his funeral. (While I was living in Japan, both my grandmothers and my younger brother died, but I only returned home for my brother's funeral.)



This photo was taken after the funeral, which I wrote about here. That's my mother, my uncle Elmer, my aunt Char, and me. (I had a few other photos from that day, but they were lost when I dropped my old computer. Dave may have copies, but I haven't checked yet.) After the funeral, I returned, numb, back to Japan, and tried not to dream of my brother.

If you check out the dates on the grave marker, you can see that my brother was pretty young, almost thirty-three years old. This is my mom, today at lunch, with my younger brother's daughter's daughter. Did you get that? My younger brother would have been a grandfather at thirty-five. I sometimes wonder how he'd like them apples.



Here is a photo of an orchid in bloom at the place where I was house-sitting last week.