The Aerie
It was Taps that got me, of course.
My father's experience in the military has never been a significant
part of our family life, so I have been repeatedly surprised whenever
I realized that he was being buried at Fort Snelling. Yet there we
were this morning in the thin, chill January light, waiting in the
assembly area of Fort Snelling for my father's ashes to arrive.
The cemetary at Fort Snelling is at once both mundane and awesome.
Mundane, because it was impossible to set foot on any of the frozen
lawns without feeling the crunch of goose feces beneath one's soles.
Awesome, because no matter where one stands, one is surrounded by a
starburst of headstones, arrayed in all directions, each representing
a deceased veteran. In every direction some alignment of headstones
formed linear rays stretching off into the distance.
After a time the mortician drove up in a sedan, rather than the
hearses arriving at the other assembly areas: apparently cremated
remains do not require a hearse. The mortician, a young fellow with a
strange, crooked smile consulted briefly with my cousin, who was
driving my mother and her two sisters. The he got back in his sedan
and led off across the lines of tombstones to a small canvas gazebo.
There we found an odd arrangement. Half a dozen uncomfortable looking
plastic chairs were arranged in a line before a squarish device, one
of those pipe-and-belt elevators used to lower coffins into graves.
Two bars were placed across this arrangement, and a foot-square panel
of green astroturf positioned atop the bars.
Resting on the panel was a dark plastic box, about the color of a
container of Hershey's Cocoa and twice as large. A sticker on the
front of the box identified it as the ashes of my father. It looked
mean and cheap, but at the same time appropriate -- the box's very
shabbiness was a harsh reminder of the fact that my father wasn't
there. That box was truly a mere box of ashes. In the mortuary we'd
been offered all sorts of decorative containers within which to place
the box, but we knew our father's opinion regarding such needless
expense, and had joked that he'd haunt us and ask why we'd wasted the
money.
From beneath the square coffin-elevator a pair of raggedy tracks led a
few yards out from under the gazebo to a pile of concrete boxes,
vaults for interring coffins. Their concrete corners were stained and
blackened, as if they'd been used before.
The whole arrangement looked absurdly as if the small box of ashes
would be rolled across the tracks and lowered slowly into the yawning
concrete vault.
Then a small bus pulled up, and a number of elderly men in uniform
piled quickly out, and arrayed themselves before the gazebo. An honor
guard.
My father was getting an honor guard? And we didn't spring for a
decorative container?
It seemed incongruous. I never thought of my father as a veteran. His
history in the Navy was something that took place in the Ancient Past,
and was never part of day-to-day life. He rarely spoke of his
experiences, and those he did describe were mundane -- no tales of
combat and death, only boredom and rote chores.
Yet here they were, aligned now, rifles raised at command.
-CRACK-
-CRACK-
-CRACK-
And now one of the elderly, uniformed men raised a horn to his lips.
The first three notes of Taps wrenched at my heart. And then three
more notes broke it, echoing from the distance; a second member of the
guard was positioned about thirty yards away, echoing the first.
The sky was silvery blue with high-altitude ice, feathery cirrus
clouds casting sundogs across the sky. The tombstones arrayed away in
all direction surrounded us in a star with sixteen points. Taps hung
in the air like the clear notes of a crystal bell.
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Posted by Albatross at January 3, 2003 12:00 AM