The picture above is of my mother’s tombstone. My sister designed it by herself, paid for it and had it placed at my mother’s grave. The grave is in the Upper Cemetery, in Rich, a small community near Brinkley in Monroe County, Arkansas.

As always, much of this blog is personal and perhaps I should spend more time perfecting my words. Once they are out there, they will be quoted out of context and stretched to include meanings I didn’t intend. I don’t write things to lash out and I don’t write them to demand a response. My opinion is no more meaningful than anyone else’s opinion, not in the real way that the world works.  (Previous Post About Writing ANYTHING  – click here…)  This post is not perfect but I fear the hesitation I have about “finishing” it enough to post it will never subside, so here it is, warts and all.

Before writing and forgetting to mention it, I don’t fully understand why some people need to raise a fuss about the tombstone. The person who stepped up to the plate chose a headstone that was meaningful to her. Her intention was to pay homage to her mother. Granted, it isn’t a traditional headstone. That’s a good thing. It would be very stupid of me to rant and rave about the tradition of expectations regarding tombstones when I favor creativity and originality everywhere else.

(I hate the idea of being buried, but love cemeteries. That’s just my contradictory life. I would not have chosen burial for my mother, nor a headstone, left to my own devices and beliefs. Again, though, that is my definitive opinion.)

When I first realized that this was the design chosen by my sister, I was surprised. I don’t know why I was surprised because craziness runs in my family! It certainly made for a great story to share. And I did share it. But I had to ask myself over and over: what exactly made it a great story? The answer lies in the fact that it was going to totally be in people’s faces about mom and how her daughter was going to remember her. It was the ultimate way of saying “There are no secrets.” Absent a major disaster, the stone is going to survive for generations and be spread on grave websites for decades. People are going to look it and probably be caught in surprise at its brashness. The cemetery where the headstone is located is comprised of mostly nondescript headstones. Creativity and style are not attributes that the family members buried there would seek out. Mom’s life is already lived, the pages of her moments already remembered, categorized and sorted in the minds of everyone who knew her. The stone isn’t going to change anyone’s perceptions of my mother.

A family member told me that she was “sickened” by the tombstone that was erected on my mother’s grave. What a horrible reaction! I can see her point about it not being traditional or what might be expected. But I don’t see it as offensive. In this scenario, the person voicing the opinion is choosing to be offended. For those who fail to make their wishes explicitly clear to those you leave behind, you should expect to not have your wishes followed. Do you really want someone like me stepping in after you’re gone? I would honor your wishes but you can be certain that if things are left up to me there is going to be some weirdness involved. In the case of the family member who was sickened, her opinion in the matter is going to be an unwritten footnote, confined to her circle in life. The longevity of the tombstone is going to drown out and render as forgotten all the negative commentary made about my sister’s choices. I see that my sister chose appropriately and in the way she saw fit. But if I did disagree, my words of reproach would be nothing more than crows screeching outside the window, while my sister’s effort will outlast any criticism. She gets the last word on mom’s tombstone.

(Although I’ve said this many times before, my dad did not want to be buried. Ever. But, he was buried and one of the many revisionist family members claims  to this day that he wanted it that way. He hated the idea of being put in the ground. In many ways, this could be construed to be much more of a problem than the content of someone’s tombstone.)

This headstone is  a true representation of my mom, and it was done with the sincerest intentions. It is an odd thing for me to be writing in defense of anything my sister does. Lord knows that the opposite is usually the case. She is crazier than I am – and that is quite a feat.

The person who steps up and takes responsibility for taking care of the things that other people won’t gets a lot of leeway. In this case, it was my sister. She chose to put a childhood nickname for my mom on the headstone, as well as having a Bud Light can etched in it. I’m convinced she did it for her own sincere reasons. It was an expression of her feelings. But even if she had chosen the stone and its content for no reason whatsoever, I still don’t see the problem.

Maybe that makes me the problem? I can certainly laugh about it. I do “get” that those who are compelled to follow a certain social set of norms might not appreciate it. It’s not what “most” people would choose. But the tombstone isn’t a summation of my mom’s life. That life has already been lived. It is a reminder to each of us that our legacy is being written every moment of every day. We can’t control how it is spun and told once we are gone, if we are remembered much at all. It would have been a valid reaction if at some point all of mom’s children turned their backs on her. One of her children decided to take charge and remember her.

Some of my family might say “That’s not how she should be remembered.” Again, this isn’t really a reasonable thing to say to my sister. Other family members are going to tell her how to remember her own mother? How does that sound in your head when you try to argue it silently? “Listen, I know she was your mom and you were very close to her, but you have no right to remember her in the way you choose.” Hmmm…. My sister had a very tumultuous relationship with with my mom. It was not a stable, consistent relationship, but it belonged to them, both anger and affection intertwined. 

Is a family going to object to mom’s nickname on the tombstone? Why? It was her nickname and not one used in anger or ridicule. Was it her picture? I don’t see why. It was a good picture of mom and it cost my sister a lot of extra money to have it made and applied to the tombstone. Eliminating those two elements leaves only the possibility of the etched Bud Light can on the bottom of the stone. I say it without malice and without the intention to further lessen the memory of my mother in my sister’s eyes, but one thing every living being on this planet must understand and know is that mom was a heavy, heavy drinker. It was a defining characteristic in her life and lead her down many of her darker roads in life. It’s no secret to anyone who knew her. All who knew her would nod their heads in agreement that drinking was one of those things that defined my mother. Denying that this is true doesn’t make it less true. It doesn’t hurt my mother and it doesn’t do any harm to anyone who knew her. Everyone who knew my mom knew her for who and what she was, for good or for ill. Each person related to her in their own way. This is true for me and it is certainly true for my sister. I don’t preach at people about some of the craziness I was put through as a child with the intention of changing the truth of my experience nor to harm anyone. It is my experience and I own it. The same is true for my sister. She was putting an iconic remembrance of her mother on the tombstone, one which to her vividly recognizes its impact in her life. I’m not quite sure how people can take that and make it something dishonorable or claim it be misleading about mom’s life. Please stop and think before lecturing or clucking to yourself about someone like my sister misrepresenting the path that she shared with my mother. We looked on them and their on-again, off-again relationship as outsiders. We didn’t understand them when they were alive and we won’t ever understand now that mom is gone. I don’t think my sister cares about most people’s opinions because we can never penetrate past our unfamiliarity about their relationship to one another. We are outsiders.

Since I’m on the soapbox ranting and preaching, I would argue that it is the tendency to suppress the truth or the things that might put people in a bad light that is the source of much of what made a great deal of our family life simply a tragedy. Kill someone drinking and driving? Don’t talk about it. Beat your wife and kids? Don’t talk about it. Go to prison? Don’t talk about it. Affairs? Shhhh….Not talking about it only led to more of the same stupid nonsense from some of the family. More light on the issues that were really true and harming people might have made people’s lives better. But that’s not how many people were raised. People collectively agreed that silence was the best method to deal with the things that make people’s lives both difficult and interesting. For mom, I’ve written before how completely transformed she was after I graduated high school, dad left her and she went to rehab in Fort Smith. She emerged from treatment as a vital, interesting person. I cannot adequately explain to you the Jekyll-Hyde transformation that took place unless you’ve experienced it firsthand yourself. Mom was a different person and the variable was the removal of the alcohol from her life, coupled with a new realization that there was something for her left in life. Maybe if people had been more open and forthcoming when she younger, maybe her road would have veered into a more vibrant way to live. The beer can etched into my mother’s tombstone isn’t an embarrassment or an accusation, it is an authentic acknowledgement of one of the most powerful things in her life. Her relationship to almost every person she knew was bloodied by her drinking. Having it on her tombstone isn’t a finger of blame pointed at her, but rather one of the truest things that could ever be said about her. It would be shocking to find anyone who knew her that didn’t have a lot of tales to share about the stuff she got into from drinking. Most people who would share those stories now wouldn’t sit and share out of spite. The truth isn’t diminished by sharing – it is only damaged when those who are left behind are pressed to change their memories to suit a better version of someone. With enough time passing, we all lose some luster off of our halos and even the horrible things we’ve said and done can be appreciated to be parts of our lives. Excising them from our stories about people can be a dishonest thing to do their memories.

For those of you with great mothers and fathers, you were given an unimaginable start in life. While I don’t intentionally paint my parents with accusatory brushstrokes of criticism, it is a truth to be echoed in my life that my parents were diminished in many ways. It doesn’t mean that I didn’t want to love them or to experience many of things that I witnessed other people in life get to cherish. But it did mean that I was ill-equipped to respond better to life as I met it. That violence in childhood tainted me and it lessened my chance to have an authentic way of interacting with my parents. It is my story to remember that I finally found my own voice to reject much of what my parents found normal and to not feel guilty about leaving them out of my life. My mom got the last laugh though, in her last year, by trumping my new confidence with her own approaching death. Our relationships with friends and family are reciprocal and defining to us.So, too, is the one I had with mom, even though it was ultimately characterized by our distance to one another at a fundamental level.

Please remember that my sister chose a way to honor her relationship with mom in her own way. She meant it in the most authentic way possible for her. Her choices do make for great story but she will indeed get the last laugh, as all the detractors pass away from the earth, taking their criticisms with them. Her remembrance of mom will stand alone, whispering its message to the nearby swamp around it – to surpass the ages and maybe even everyone who once lived to remember mom.

 (“It is no accident that those who scream the loudest for you to speak only when you have something positive to say are usually the ones with the most interest in keeping you quiet.” -x)

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