It isn’t weird, is it, to wander around cemeteries? I don’t think so. I like the cemetery where my family is buried. There are my grandparents, my parents, and my Uncle Bud. I was really close to him. Every fall, when the weather gets blustery, my wife and I plant mums on their graves. The mums don’t last long. I think the cemetery digs them up right after the first frost and discards them. I don’t like to think of flowers going in the trash or getting burned. It’s like thinking of souls going to hell. I put it out of my mind. Looking at all the gravestones and thinking of all the dead here in one place, I also think of how my wife and I will need graves one day. I put that out of my mind, too. It’s weird to think about things like that.

We were at Memorial Park last week with our mums. Another thing that bothers me is that we only come once a year, in the fall. I had a hunch other families come here often to honor their dead. I don’t do that. I come here mostly out of guilt. My parents, though loving and responsible, were strict and often let me know how I didn’t measure up in lots of ways. I was kind of like Uncle Bud, who drank himself to death. I was eight years old when he passed on. I didn’t understand death then. I still don’t, and I’m still angry about losing my only uncle so young. I don’t care what he did. I loved him. He’s not going to hell. 

Someone else was in our corner of Memorial Park when we went to plant the mums. It was a guy about my age. He was putting wreaths and flowers on four gravestones near us. My eyes wandered over to him because I was looking for a faucet so we could water the mums. I saw a faucet near him, but it was hooked up to a hose that went to some other thing that looked like a hose bibb or connection that might give water. Our eyes met, then drifted apart. He was very deliberate in his movements, very focused on making his headstones as presentable as possible. I went back to my wife, who was holding an empty water can. I needed to find water.

“There’s a spigot over there,” the man suddenly said, raising his voice just enough for me to hear him. He pointed to a section of the cemetery with a wave of his hand.

“Thanks,” I said, starting to head in that direction.

“I lost my sister last week,” he half-shouted. It was a half-shout that come out almost as a whisper. His voice suppressed grief in a way that, nonetheless, was firm and audible. I sensed he wanted to talk. I didn’t. I came here to perform a function and then go home. The wind was not blustery yet. It was October, a blustery month, with a wind that still remembered summer. It was like all of us who, on the cusp of death, remember youth. No! I was not on the cusp of death any more now than before. But we are all on the cusp of death. We all need to have our cemetery plots bought and paid for in case Death comes. Nobody knows when that is. I did not want to talk.

“She was only sixty-two,” he went on. “Emory Hospital in Atlanta. She had a rare disease.”

I pointed to where Uncle Bud was buried, alongside my grandparents. “Uncle Bud,” I said. “He was thirty-seven.” 

“What a shame,” he said. “Drinking?”

I stared at him.

“I went through the program myself. One month at Resurrection. They said it wasn’t enough, so I came home and went to Clybourn on an out-patient basis. Haven’t had a drop in five years.”

“Amazing,” was all I could say.

“Donna is arranging everything. My sister will go to the mausoleum next Saturday. She’s terrific.”

I didn’t know who Donna was. I was confused. Who were all these wreaths for?

“These wreaths are for my stepdad, my mom, and my grandparents,” he said. “I come here in the spring, the summer, and now. Don’t feel bad you come here just once a year. I know your family appreciates it. Mine does. They were German immigrants that settled in Wilmette and had a farm. I own the house I grew up in. We never stray far from our roots.”

“Was Donna your sister?” I asked, although I didn’t really want to continue the conversation.

“Donna is the administrator here. She takes care of everything—the plots, maintenance, picks up the flowers at the end of October and sees they are treated properly. She’s very good.”

“What do you mean ‘treated properly’? You mean they are burned or something, right?”

“Oh, no,” he said. “The flowers go right to heaven.” He looked at me and smiled.

I couldn’t tell if he was putting me on or not. He had a priest-like smile on his face, the kind a priest wears when he talks about the mysteries of Transubstantiation, the Resurrection, and miracles. I was getting uncomfortable. Luckily, my wife called.

“I’ll go get that water,” I said. I had to get away from him.

“Nice talking to you,” he said. “Name’s Guttzeit, Fred Guttzeit.”

My wife and I went to the spigot and filled up our can. “This guy’s a nut case. He says when the cemetery gathers all the flowers up at the end of the year, the flowers go to heaven.”

“Heaven as in Waste Management?” she asked. 

“I think so.” We filled the can and watered the graves. I stood in front of Mom and Dad’s grave, thinking of how much they’d done for me, feeling that old guilt come back, guilt for not coming here often, guilt for drinking like my Uncle Bud, guilt for not believing in Transubstantiation, guilt for not going to church very often. At least I came here once a year. That guy was right. My family appreciated it. I hoped they did.

We went to where we parked the car, next to the guy’s car. “All finished,” he said, wiping his hands. His wreaths were on four little stands. “My whole family is here. And so will I be one day.” He smiled. “Plots are three thousand dollars,” he said.

That’s weird, isn’t it, him knowing? Him knowing I wondered what the cost was? 

“You know, if you’re worried about your mums not being out here long, you can tell Donna to make an exemption for your flowers, a plenary indulgence, and the cemetery will wait till the day you ask for until they pick them up.”

“A plenary indulgence?”

“A special endurance.”

“A special endurance?”

“An exceptional intercession,” the man said. “There is nothing ordinary about it. Donna will take down your name and write it in a special book where all the good names are kept. She is infallible.”

“My flowers will last as long as I want? And then they go straight to heaven?”

The man looked up and pointed to the sky. “They will go join your family and be in the Union of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Forever.”

I got those flowers on sale at the Jewel for $4.99. Little did I know.

I did not want to continue this conversation, but I did want to meet this gal Donna. There had to be a rational explanation for all the silly things this guy talked about—plenary indulgences, Transubstantiation, Body and Blood, eternity. Science was more powerful than religion. Science is what killed Uncle Bud, the science of how liver cirrhosis is fatal. All the rosaries I said for Bud did not bring him back. He was not going to hell for his drinking. My flowers were cheap, just like our lives were cheap, just like the whole charade of religion and penance and genuflecting and the Holy See and Consecration the last rites were cheap, a formality we go through to get through life to make all the people around us happy because we are conforming to centuries-old ceremonies. Yeah, I wanted to see Donna.

Donna worked out of that neat little office building of beige brick at the entranced to Memorial Park, the office I had gone in twice, once when Mom died and once for Dad. It was scrupulously clean, not a thing out of place. I’d like to be buried here one day, where nothing seemed to be out of place. I’d hate for them to lose my body or something. By the looks of the desks, file cabinets, the shiny linoleum floor and the Venetian blinds, my corpse would be in good hands here. Donna sat behind one of the desks. She was a prim, little woman, hair done up in a bun. She wore a tailored suit. She was the kind of woman her husband could always go to when he couldn’t find something. She had that look.

“We don’t throw out flowers like other places. They are sacred. We respect the wishes of our families. If you want your flowers, wreaths, and other adornments to stay untouched longer than the prescribed duration, we do that. We also see to it that the flowers are dispatched properly, in conformance with Catholic dignity and protocol.”

“Meaning?”

“They go directly to heaven.” Having said that, she sat back in her office chair and smiled a demure smile. Her office seemed to shine with the late afternoon gray sunshine, a glow I remembered from holy pictures the Monsignor gave us at Confirmation and First Communion, an aura we were taught in catechism class would be ours if we avoided sin and occasions of sin. Her posture was ramrod straight, the backbone of a woman who could refuse temptation, shout gospel, follow strict procedures and still manage to love and believe in mysteries. “And here comes the angel of deliverance, with his chariot.”

A Waste Management truck pulled up, dropped off a dumpster alongside the office and picked up the loaded dumpster next to it, winched onto its frame and drove off. It took less than a minute.

“That’s a dumpster,” I said. “Not a chariot.”

Donna smiled. “It looks like a dumpster. Looks can be deceiving.”

I must have smirked because the next thing she said was, “I have proof. Would you like to see?”

Of course I did. What proof could she offer? A receipt from Michael the Archangel or St. Peter?

She slid out of the chair over to one of her file cabinets basking in the glow of the heavenly afternoon fading light. The cabinet was marked Receipts. She opened the top drawer and frowned. “October is missing,” she said.

I knew it. This exactly reminded me of a story I once heard from my pal Ernie Ouilette regarding UFOs. Ernie was a firm believer in them. He read about them, collected newspaper clippings, watched documentaries, even went to Roswell, New Mexico to see for himself. He said UFOs were real and had proof. When we asked him what proof he had, he said he’d show us a photograph the next day. So we waited. On the following day he brought us in a picture.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Yes!” we said impatiently. “Show us.”

He showed us a picture of a cloud. “The UFO is right behind that cloud,” he said.

So it is with belief. Some things must be believed to be seen. This is what I suspected—a missing receipt or something. This is what Pilate’s soldiers found when they rolled back the stone and Jesus was gone after His crucifixion—an IOU. I should have known. We made fun of old Ernie and laughed at him. He stopped coming around. We no longer saw him. I don’t know where he went.

My wife and I exited Donna’s office and went back to our car. The guy with the wreaths was gone. “I wonder where he went.”

“Wonder where who went?” My wife asked.

“The guy! The guy who told us about Donna, the guy whose sister died.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was out looking for a place to fill up the water can. Who is this guy?”

“Frederick Guttzeit! For crying out loud, Monica. He was right here. He’s from Germany. His grandparents immigrated to Baltimore and started a farm in Wilmette on Illinois Road. He has two brothers and just lost a sister to thrombocythaemia in Atlanta. She died one week ago during a thunderstorm. You don’t remember that?’

Monica looked at me like I was nuts. “I’ll show you!” I said. “I’ll show you!”

We drove back to where my family was buried. Right next to it was the guy’s family. But where there had been four wreaths on their neat little stands, now there were five. I looked at the gravestones. One stood out. The name was Frederick Guttzeit. 

Then a Memorial Park van drove up. Donna was driving. She held a piece of paper. “I can’t believe I misplaced this. This doesn’t happen, but here is the receipt. It was a beige piece of stationery embossed with the words Catholic Cemeteries—Archdiocese of Chicago. It had a simple statement explaining that its arrangement with Memorial Park guaranteed that flowers leaving here had reached their rapturous destination and delivery was certified. I studied the receipt signature carefully. It read:

Ernie Ouilette

Donna drove off in her van. She didn’t know who Ernie Ouilette was. She said it’s a different signature every time. I asked her if an Uncle Bud had ever signed for the flowers. She said she would check, but not to wait too anxiously for an answer because, as she said, “Don’t wait for miracles to happen. When they’re ready, they’ll happen.”

Paul Smith writes poetry & fiction. He lives in Skokie, Illinois with his wife Flavia. Sometimes he performs poetry at an open mic in Chicago. He believes that brevity is the soul of something he read about once, and whatever that something is or was, it should be cut in half immediately.