My father is buried at the national cemetery, and I ordered a copy of the interment record for the family history. We’re outside Anderson, Indiana. He passed in 1988, my mother followed in 2004, and she’s buried beside him. The record listed both of them, but there was one line at the bottom for remaining eligible interments. It said one. I called because I assumed it was a clerical error, but the man said a spouse’s plot could hold a dependent child under certain conditions.
I told him there was no dependent child. There was me and my brother, and we’re both in our sixties. He said the eligibility had been established when my mother was buried in 2004 and that the documentation had been submitted at the time. Then he offered to tell me the relationship listed on the eligibility form. “Daughter.” I said that’s me, but he said my name wasn’t on it. He read me the name and birth year. The year was 1966. I was born in 1961, my brother in 1963, and I’d never heard the name before.
I asked him to send me a copy of the paperwork. It arrived four days later, and my mother’s signature was on the form. The strange part wasn’t the name anymore. It was the address listed for the child — our house, the one we lived in from 1965 until my father died. I called my brother and asked if he’d ever heard Mom mention a baby after him. He said no, then went quiet and told me to check the old family Bible. I found it that night. There was a fourth birth record written in my mother’s handwriting, dated 1966, but the child’s name had been crossed out so heavily I could barely read it. Underneath it, in my father’s handwriting, were five words: “She was never ours to keep.”
