My cousin Stephen was about 18 months old when Lenny died. Lenny was his big brother and my beloved cousin. We were similar in age and temperment, he was my bud. Steve and I have spent many hours as adults discussing the effects of grief on our family, and how it still affects us.
Steve and I had never been to Lenny’s grave, although Steve lived less than five miles from the Cemetery for the first half of his life.
His parents never visited the cemetery, nor did mine. This was part of the denial, the “we will never speak of this again” aspect of Lenny’s death. It had been more than 40 years since Lenny died. I was not the only one who had lost faith in God upon his death.
Having bought into the taboo, Steve and I were both reluctant to ask his parents where the grave was and decided to try to find it on our own, having only the name of the cemetery.
The historic cemetery contains many acres of land, we assumed it would be no easy task. It felt like we were setting out to find a needle in a haystack and put a day aside to search.
As we drove into St. Mary’s cemetery and looked at the vast expanse of white stones before us, Steve said jokingly,
“Can’t you just use your psychic GPS to find it?”