At a little after seven, an old pickup came through the cemetery gate and stopped several rows away from my father’s grave. A man got out carrying a trimmer, a small fuel can, and a thermos. He didn’t look around or check the other graves. He walked directly to Dad’s stone, set his things down, and started working. He edged the grass around the marker with the kind of care you’d expect from someone who had been doing it for years.
I waited until he finished before walking over. I asked him if he knew my father, and he turned the trimmer off without answering. Then he looked at me for a few seconds and asked, “You’re his son, aren’t you?” I told him yes, and he said he’d wondered when someone from the family would finally come. I asked why he had been taking care of the grave when the cemetery already paid people to do it, and he said there were some things he’d promised my father he would do until someone came looking for him.
He reached into the truck and brought out an old envelope that had clearly been opened many times. My father’s name was written on the front, along with a date from two weeks before he died. The man said Dad had given it to him and told him not to deliver it unless one of his children ever asked about the person who kept the grave beside his. I looked toward the two neighboring stones, both belonging to people our family had never heard of, and asked what they had to do with my father.
The man finally sat down beside the truck and told me my father had been visiting the cemetery long before he was buried there. He said Dad came every month to sit at the same bench and meet someone, always alone, and that the last meeting happened only days before he died. Then he handed me the envelope and said my father had written one sentence on the back: “If my son ever finds out who has been caring for my grave, he’ll finally understand why I never told him about the summer of 1987.”
