Maryrest Cemetery, Mahwah, NJ

Suz, Owen and I left Kelly and Dustin's converted cabin in Glen Spey, NY Saturday morning, hoping to get to Brooklyn by about 2 p.m. to catch the Mermaid Parade on Coney Island. Suz spent the last 2 days painting a mural in the nursery set aside for Kelly and Dustin's fast-approaching baby, which you can see on her mural website Wallybee.com (well, pretty soon anyway, as soon as yours truly updates the site).

Once we rounded up all our junk and said goodbye, we drove along the Delaware River, through Port Jervis and into New Jersey, pretty much following the same route as my trip to High Point a couple days earlier. Before we were to drive into the city, I wanted to do some more family soul-searching. After my ghostly experience at the High Point State Park, what better way to sort through the past than visiting the graves of my father's family? So we set off for a little Catholic cemetery near Ramsey, our old hometown. (My father is buried in the sandy earth of Spring Hill, Florida, the area where our branch of the family settled in the 70s.)



Maryrest Cemetery in the Ramapo Valley was once quiet and secluded, but I-278 now runs just beyond its southeastern edge, and the constant swoosh of traffic, however subtle and relatively far off, made for a modern soundtrack for the old burial ground. We drove in, parked along one of the narrow roads, and following some suggestions my cousin Al provided, started the search. Up and down rows, stone after stone of good Catholic names like O'Doyle, Janiewicz, Marcucci...the names and inscriptions became a blur. They were vaguely ordered by date, but the cemetery has expanded its boundaries over the years, so I couldn't figure out the pattern, if there was one. Finally Suz suggested I go knock on the door of the cemetery office, and like the moment I came to my senses in High Point state park, I said, "duh, yeah." I climbed over the cemetery's stone wall, walked to the office and peered inside. Dark. I knocked anyway. A man emerged from behind the front counter, opened the door, and when I explained I was searching for family members, he let me in.

He pulled up the diocese's database and asked for a name. I started with Marsico, my aunt and uncle, as I figured the name Hill is too common. He pulled out a photocopied map, circled the area, and jotted down the section and grave number. "Ok, another name?" he asked. So I offered my grandfather: Frederick Hill. Sure enough, buried right near the Marsicos. I leaned over his shoulder and scanned the list of Hills all buried in the same section.

Hill, Donald Albert, b. 8 Jun 1921, d. 30 Aug 1976, Plot #12 A 118
Hill, Fred L., b. 1887, d. 1952, Plot #12 B 12
Hill, James Henry, b. 6 Sep 1927, d. 27 Aug 1948, Plot #12 B 12
Hill, Jane F., b. 1919, d. 1993, Plot #12 A 118
Hill, Raymond J., b. 1913, d. 1992, Plot #12 B 12
Hill, Ruth M., b. 1892, d. 1951, Plot #12 B 12

I saw my uncle Jimmy's name. I saw my uncle Ray, uncle Donny and his wife Jane, and my grandparents Ruth and Fred, both of whom died before I was born. Another name, not on list above I cribbed from an interment database website, was Baby Girl Hill. That was my sister, who died in 1956, stillborn. There was another Baby Girl Hill, but my mother wasn't sure who that was, and I might have gotten the section (and therefore which family) wrong. That's another phone call to the cemetery.

I headed back to the plots and started my search. Suz was walking with Owen near the entrance, and I waved. She pointed to Owen, a signal that he needed a break, and headed to the car. Again, the ordering was somewhat vague, but eventually I figured out the discreet borders of Section 12. I walked up and down and back again through the rows, hoping for a glimpse, and I finally found the first clue: Travolta. Our family and the Travoltas--the parents of Battleship Earth star John Travolta--were friends, and my father knew his father well. He owned an auto repair shop, I believe. The Travoltas buried here are Salvatore, born in Italy in 1879, and his wife Josephine--John's grandparents. My cousin told me the Travoltas were buried nearby, so I had hit paydirt, so to speak. A few more steps, I found the family plot. I think this is the first time in my life I had seen it.

I brushed wet grass clippings from the low, flat plaques the Veterans Administration provided for Uncle Donny and Uncle Jimmy, and stood up between the rows of stones, trying to piece together the connections and the history. John Henry Hill, died in 1947--only 21--just after he got back from Europe. He was killed when his car hit a patch of ice. His death devastated the family, especially my father, who was just two years older than him. In a family of eight boys and a girl, the span of years is great, so I've realized over the years my father and Jimmy were really tight. I wonder if my father ever recovered from his death.

Another young family member was John Marsico, who also died at 21. John I remember fairly well: after he got back from Vietnam he had hitchhiked from New Jersey to Florida--to a 10-year old boy, here was a real live hippie. Once John attempted the impossible: to sit down at our dinner table shirtless. My father made him take off his hat and go put a shirt on. I remember my folks getting the late night phone call: John's van had plummeted over the Anclote River bridge in Pasco County, Fla., and all the guys he had been drinking with that night got out of the quickly-submerging van except him. John was a sweet guy, a pacifist who knew the Army was not his calling, yet his parents laid him out in his Army uniform, his long blond hair and beard shorn. If they didn't have the son they wanted while he was alive, they would have him in death. When my brother told me this story years ago, it broke my heart.

I always feel a bit awkward in cemeteries--I am not superstitious usually, and not given to prayer. I believe a person dies only when they are forgotten, their life energy joining a great cosmic flow we all share, and a patch of earth full of bodies encased in boxes is not really where they go when their bodies fail, whether in a violent or horrifying act or peacefully in their sleep, as my aunt Ruthie went. They live on in our memories and stories, as part of our own lives and of everyone whom they touched. Yet here I was--this graveyard is as much an embodiment of our family history as anything, as most of the stories were lost before I even set foot here. So maybe my aversion to cemeteries wasn't as fully thought out as I believed.

I had no flowers to lay or Lord's Prayers to offer. What's the point? Only a few words of acknowledgment, a sign of the cross in respect of their beliefs, and a few photographs to burnish the moment in my memory. Now I would have something to tell my own son, who perhaps one day would seek out this crowded place: too crowded it appears, for future generations to be buried here.

We left, and drove the few miles to our family's old house in Ramsey, and I snapped a picture. I felt like I hadn't left the cemetery, as this house was only ours in my memory. In the early 60s my father had refaced the house with brick, converted the garage into a rumpus room with a huge fireplace, and added the garage to the right. I used to lay in a hammock in the backyard and count the train cars as they trundled along the ridge that overlooked the lot behind us. Route 17 is just beyond that. It is North Jersey, after all, where interstates that cut along old cemeteries are no big deal.