He's Home Again

We arrived at the well-kept old cemetery just a few minutes late for our appointment after experiencing some minor problems with the directions we were provided. Seems there’s more than one road with the same name leading to different places. We wanted the country road with the same name that didn’t run next to the railroad tracks.

Despite the many times I’d been there with my father, I would not have been able to find it on my own, so we were thankful for the basic directions and the fact everyone involved had cell phones.

As a California girl, I had to laugh at our situation which sounded just like one of those commercials I’ve heard…..Ok…you are going to come to a fork in the road, actually 3 forks…you don’t want to turn on that first one…just go about 50 yards till you come to the second fork and turn left there. If you find that you are at the top of the hill…there’s an old white house with a green tractor in the field…you have gone too far. So turn around and go back to the corner and turn right…No white house on the corner? It’s a two story red brick with a big stack of hay in the field? Ok….I know exactly where you are. Just stop right there and I will come and get ‘ya!

Mr. Reese, the caretaker for Upper Camp Creek Cemetery looked as if he was in his 70s and appeared to be in much better shape physically than any of us. His face was weathered from years at the “Highway Department” from which he’d retired. He stood tall and strong on that sunny Monday morning, as he thrust the post hole digger into the red Eastern Oklahoma soil where so many of my ancestors are buried.

He had a genuine reverence for the departed and their families, giving his sympathy for our “loss.” Before he started digging at the exact spot I‘d selected between the headstones of my infant half-brothers, he asked my permission to use that particular tool since our urn measured only about 3 inches high. It seemed a perfect choice to me. I certainly wasn’t expecting a bull dozer for this little chore, but I guess he felt we might find a post hole digger somewhat irreverent. My only concern was that the hole was deep enough at about 2 and a half feet. Mr. Reese assured me that it would be fine and secure with the granite headstone I was about to order, in place right above. As if on cue, Mr. Reese gave us a few minutes alone.

My Uncle Lee handed me the urn, and after a minute or so, I passed it to my Aunt Mary to hold, which was my idea of some type of ceremony. When she handed it back, I dropped to my knees and gently placed Papa’s urn in his beloved Oklahoma resting place. I scraped some of the red dirt over it with my hands and rose to my feet when Mr. Reese appeared with a shovel and asked if I wanted to use it. With tears in my eyes, I pulled more of the earth over my father’s ashes, then passed it to Lee for his turn.

I was burying a part of my father, but they were burying a sibling; someone they’d had in their life for so much longer than I. My heart ached for them to have experienced such a loss and such difficult grief; a feeling I know too well having buried two of my sisters in the past few years.

We each thanked Mr. Reese with a donation to the fund for the upkeep of the cemetery, which he gladly accepted. We then headed to town to purchase the granite marker, which Mr. Reese offered to place at no charge.

I left Eastern Oklahoma knowing that I accomplished something that my father always wanted, a final resting place near where he was born.  Because as he neared death in August 2004, he wanted to make things easier on his family by saying “Just cremate me and bury me here in California.”

I think he’d be proud to know I was able to do both.