A Box of Sand

Chapter 1
My Story

The car seemed to sense where I wanted it to go. It navigated every twist and turn on the Inter-Boro Parkway as if there was a magnetized track it was riding upon. I had always been certain that this parkway was unsafe for driving. It had to have been designed and built by a madman who wanted to stop drivers from Brooklyn getting to Queens or the reverse; drivers getting from Queens to Brooklyn. I was certain that was the reason they never published the figures of the amount of accidents on this particular parkway.
When I turned off the Parkway, the car made two lefts almost without my turning the wheel at all. It stopped at the gate of the cemetery apparently a split second before I applied the brake. When the gate swung open it took the right turn directly toward the office. It slowed and came to a stop once again as if it was being driven by an unknown mystic driver.
I rolled down the window. The sun blazed into my eyes.
“Where are you going?”
The woman had appeared as if when the gate swung open, she was catapulted out of her office to a place that landed her by the driver’s side window. Her heft partially blocked the sun from my eyes. I could barely see a worn face that had forgotten how to smile.
I handed the woman the slip of paper that had the grave site marked on it.
“That’s new, isn’t it?”
“Three days ago.”
“You know where it is?”
“Yes, I do.”
“You mind waiting here just a sec?”
She hobbled away before I could answer. I minded, but what the hell, everyone has rules. The sun bathed the car again until she returned holding a thick dog-eared book. She thumbed through some pages.
“Brandeis, right? Three days ago, yes, that’s right.”
“Right.”
“You want a Rabbi?”
“No.”
You’re sure? They can help.”
“I’m sure; no Rabbi.”
“They can make it easier for mourners ‘specially if this is your first visit. First visit after the burial, I mean.”
No change in her look.
“No Rabbi, thanks.”
I gunned the motor.
“You should leave some rocks; Brandeis will know you were here.”
She turned and went back toward the office; she turned twice in my direction, shook her head and disappeared behind the door to the office.
The woman’s appearance destroyed whatever directional principle my car had been operating under. I got lost twice and had to find and then ask a grave-digger where my Grandfather’s grave was. He looked at the paper I handed him and then told me, “Back up, then straight and two rights and a left as soon as you can and you’re there buddy. Need one of them Rabbis? They know where everyone is who called it quits.”
He didn’t even crack a smile.
“No thanks. Back up, two rights and then a left. Thanks.”
I took back my piece of paper and backed up out of the aisle my car was in. Straight ahead, two rights and a left; my car’s directional system had been fully restored. I stopped in front of a mound of freshly piled dirt that had a slat of white lumber stuck into it with the name “B-R-A-N-D-E-I-S” printed from top to bottom in black block letters. I got out of the car.
There was a grave stone close to the mound of dirt:
“E-V-A B-R-A-N-D-E-I-S”, it read. My grandmother died roughly three years before. Memories of her flashed across my brain. I saw her with her false teeth, always a lousy fit, moving in her mouth as if they were swimming. She adjusted them with her tongue, never her fingers.
“Who needs to know?” she would say. “I know, ‘genug iz genug’ .”
I smiled at the memory. She ‘cheated’ when we played casino and when she was caught, she always blamed it on her glasses.
“They don’t see, either,” she said in Yiddish.
Memories.
I thought a solo visit to my Grandfather’s grave without any other family members present to intrude on my thoughts, would ease some of the pain of his dying. It didn’t work the way I had hoped it would. I stood in front of the pile of dirt with the marker on it. There wasn’t a sadder sight I could ever imagine. Clouds drifted high above, blocked the sun and for a few seconds turned the day as dark as my feelings were. When the sun returned and bathed the stick of lumber with his name on it in its glaring unforgiving light, I realized I wasn’t going to get the relief I craved; not here; not in the cemetery. I got back into the car.
Someone beside the woman from the cemetery office told me a visitor usually left rocks to let the soul of the departed one know that it could rest more easily because it hadn’t been forgotten. I didn’t believe any of that religious stuff, but something got me out of the car. I picked up a few rocks and stacked them neatly in the fresh dirt alongside the grave marker and put a few on my Grandmother’s grave as well. I looked at several near-by graves and saw that there were stones on several of the nearest headstones. There was no gravestone to mark my grandfather’s grave yet. The rocks in the dirt would have to do. I got back into the car; it took me twice as long to get out of the cemetery as it had getting to the grave site. I felt like shit as I finally drove away from the cemetery.
Chapter 2