The Stone
My father was killed on the drive to my house to celebrate his birthday with me. That was one day in January long ago and it’s all I will say about that day. The details of death are unique but death is universal. I hope to write about what is universal—both yours and mine. Also, details reek of catastrophe and I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. This is not that kind of a story. This is, really, a story about a stone.
What I want to share happened two summers ago, in Miami. I had just given someone landmark directions to where I would be that afternoon: it’s close to the Ikea next to a large cemetery by a highway, and whoever it was (who had to know me well) took a moment to render the map and said, you know, that’s where your dad was buried. No, no… I didn’t know.
All summer, I had been sitting on a green chair three blocks away from a patch of land I feigned did not exist. Suddenly, my plans for the afternoon were postponed because this would be the day to get in touch with my huevos (men’s only look like eggs; ovaries are literally huevos) and confront what I had been hiding from for so long. In this time of hiding I had two kids and grew to roughly adult size. But one cannot become an adult without courage.
My dread had everything to do with the symbol of the stone, La Tumba, as container for what remained of him, this man who had been so much. The difference between cowardice and courage often comes down to symbols. How large symbols loom in one’s life.
I got my huevos the moment I deflated the symbol of La Tumba back to actual size— it’s only a slab of stone. I can handle a rectangle of carved rock. Anything beyond that needs no handling. Anything beyond that is an embellishment of the mind.
It was a ten minute walk. I don’t remember it at all. I got past two hideous angels holding trumpets and into a very cold office with more angel motifs. I shivered.
Behind the desk was a woman speaking softly into the phone, twirling an engagement ring. She held up a finger without looking, acknowledging the mass of my body. I stepped back and clutched my hands. I felt stiff and hollowed out like a straw. “Yes, honey? What can I do for you?” asked the soft voice. The corners of her eyes drooped in sympathy or exhaustion. “I’m looking for a slab of stone,” I replied with a smile, immediately realizing that cuteness is cute to people twice one’s age and she certainly was not. I corrected, “I’m sorry, this is difficult. I’d like to find my dad’s stone.” Her eyes dropped further “I’m sosorryhoney, was he just interred?” I pursed my lips, “about twenty years ago.” Her eyes lifted, “Oh. Do you have information other than his name? Like, the month? We have a lot of…” I interrupted, “try his birthday.” She did and his little rectangle came up on the computer. “Oh this is so weird we don’t have a location here.” I was nonplussed. “I have to scour the whole place, then? Everywhere?” She nodded, unaware that I had mustered the huevos to walk straight to one slab of stone. They’d run out before I found it. I said with a heavy jaw, “I ca…” she held up a finger and I shut up, then with that same finger she dialed three numbers and explained the circumstances to a gruff voice on the line. Then she hung up, satisfied. “Manny’s coming.”
I thanked her and said I’d wait for Manny outside. In a short while I was stiff as a straw but full with sweat. A golf cart materialized and the driver poked his head out and squinted, “you the one looking for dad?” I nodded and got in. “Manny,” we both said. “Diaz,” he added, touching his chest gently. I patted mine with delight, “that’s my last name, my father’s!” It’s a very common surname in Miami but this was a great comfort. He spoke to me, looking straight ahead, “Well I’m gonna stay with you till we get it, you hear? I’m not doing nothing else till we got it.” He drove us out of the winding entrance path and into an endless field. This would take all afternoon and all evening too. “I’m so glad you’re here Manny Diaz,” I said. He kept his eyes on the field as if he didn’t hear or didn’t have anything to say about it.
Then he replied “we’ll start at the very back by the old trees” and mumbled a strategy of letters and numbers till we came upon a building and he tapped my knee “look, that’s me” he pointed up, “finishing up that mausoleum, got two more coming.” I had no cogent comment and said something stupid like, “It’s good, Manny Diaz; looks like a condo!” Whatever it was, he liked it. He huffed and smiled slightly, still looking ahead. The man was built like an oak. Oak skin, oak voice, oak smile.
We got to very back by the old trees and began combing each lot. Manny Diaz started from the left, I took the right ‘till we’d meet in the middle, and back to the golf cart and onto the next lot. After five or six lots, it got a little playful, going slab-to-slab-to-slab-to-slab. After ten lots I almost forgot what we were doing. Then I heard a dense, oak sound on my left
“Sweetheart, We Found Him.”
This moment in itself was miraculous. That sentence. You know what was the last thing I heard about my father some twenty years before?
“Sweetheart, We Lost Him.”
I walked across the lot. He was kneeling on the stone. I lowered myself down to him. He was crying. I was tentative but eventually got really close, like a deer. He swung an oak-branch arm around me and I could sense the rainfall and dirt and many heavy fruits of his life. This was no consolation— he was crying. I told him again. “I’m glad you’re here Manny Diaz.” For a while, we kneeled in silence like a couple of orphans. Then I wiped his right cheek and he wiped the left and walked to the golf cart without looking back.
Ah. The gray slab. I finally turned to it and read the carvings. I wept. This was the symbol I hadn’t been able to face: my father’s name, there, in serif font. This was the symbol.
Next line: his start and end dates like bookends around a story that went on in every direction. (A breath: remember that there are no actual bookends, there is you on your knees in the heat on a stone.)
The stone was discolored. How much did it rain? How many birds shat here? How hot did the summers get? How many seeds were blown and eaten here? How many flowers drooped and rotted (surely in all this time someone must have brought a bouquet). This was a dirty stone with letters and numbers. The looming symbol began to fade.
Until two diligent ants rose up from the grass and got into the labyrinth of letters… were they playing? Was this Play? I plucked some blades of grass around and decorated the stone. I made little lines all around his name, the way I accentuated my daughter’s name: bright, bombastic, fun. I looked in my bag for a photo of her, didn’t I have a photo of her? Yes, behind a debit card that got no use, an old picture of my daughter in pigtails and a red dress. I also found a sandwich receipt and used the back for a thorough letter: I love you.
This could be an altar. I had leafy exclamations and my daughter in pigtails and a red dress, and a letter with all that needed saying. Then a thought came from the right— where a row of flamboyant trees presided, unaware of what their soil carried— flowers! the stone needs orange flowers!
I found a semi accessible branch in the row of trees and climbed that mothafocka. And it was a mothafocka because it scraped my knee and tore my coral dress. And, mothafocka, I had not had this much fun before. Not ever. Climbing a tree past a certain age is both ridiculous and electrifying. When I finally saddled the branch, I had a singular objective, get that twig with the most flowers. There was such clarity and simplicity in this.
Life was good.
Flamboyant blooms look like open mouths shouting joy! shouting life! with their lungs of color. On top of that tree I was struck with an enthusiasm I can’t fully account for now. I made a primate swing forward and finally clutched the flowers. I let out a whoooooo! and other noises and jumped to the grass like something the tree dropped. In that great moment, in that elemental pain of having jumped off a tree, the looming symbol had completely faded. Dad’s Death was done. Dead. The stone would be an altar.
I skipped over the field of plaques, a river full of stones, and reached the most beautiful among them: the one with the little girl in pigtails and a red dress. I arranged the flowers, covering the bogus dates.
I spoke to the air, “Dad? This is a temporary stone. I’m going to find you a proper stone. I’ll find a boulder and inscribe your name. No date brackets.” Then I thought, maybe a start date, though. He’s not quite finished but he started. Maybe a poem. I shed a few tears because making his stone myself seemed a fine idea.
Then I spoke again. “Dad? It took me longer to come to this stone than all the time I knew you.” I laughed. Oh, the jest of this!
The jest of time!
My father was not subject to time or death. Nothing made sense anymore— I came to this weeping stone to feel rapturously alive. There was nothing more to do here. I straightened my daughter’s picture and a few leaves that the wind moved and I put the receipt with the one-sentence letter in my dress pocket. It needed no saying and there was no reader here.
I walked the long path that traversed the mausoleum construction site. There was the empty golf cart that had carried me to the stone. I sat and rested my head for a little while. My eyes followed the men in hard hats, painted gold by the sunset. They seemed to be playing, like the ants. There was Manny Diaz on the third level. He was still; particular about the straight placement of something. I reached into my dress pocket, flattened the crumpled letter and tucked it in his seat cushion. Time to move.
I kept on walking the winding path, stepping light as snow.
