Things I Wish I Told My Mother by Susan Patterson

Author:Susan Patterson [Patterson, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-04-17T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 33

WHAT KIND OF DAUGHTER brings her recently hospitalized mother to visit a cemetery?

It sounds like the beginning of a riddle. And in any other city, it might be. But Paris is home to Père Lachaise—a cemetery that’s become a huge tourist attraction. Certainly because of its serene beauty, but mostly because of the famous people buried there.

The cemetery opened in 1804. At first, nobody was interested. Too far from the city for a funeral, they said. Definitely too far for weekly visits from grieving families.

Then Napoleon had a great idea: dig up a few famous bodies from other cemeteries—the playwright Molière, the fabulist La Fontaine—and rebury them here. Bingo. Lachaise became the go-to place for both the living and the dead.

When my mother and I arrive at the gate, we buy a guidebook. Almost a million people are buried here; a million headstones, mausoleums, and tombs. Most are regular, little-known Parisians. But it’s also the resting place for some great artists: actress Sarah Bernhardt, composer Frédéric Chopin, dancer Isadora Duncan, and authors Gertrude Stein, Marcel Proust, and Honoré de Balzac, among many others.

As we walk around, we discover that certain graves have become magnets for groupies. Poet and playwright Oscar Wilde’s tomb, which has a sphinxlike naked flying angel, is surrounded by Plexiglas covered with scribbled messages and lipstick kisses. The grave of musician Jim Morrison is cordoned off by metal barricades, though that doesn’t stop adoring fans from leaving behind the detritus of a rock ’n’ roll life well lived: candles, flowers, empty bottles of wine, even drug paraphernalia.

“This does not look like any cemetery I’ve ever seen,” my mother comments. She’s right. Five thousand tall, scattered trees—oak, maple, ash, and chestnut—make it look more like an elegant park. There is nothing sad about this place.

“It’s so soothing here, so quiet and peaceful,” I say. “I bet that’s the big draw of this place. It makes death seem that way, too.” She nods.

Still, as we walk, I can tell that something is beginning to weigh Dr. Liz down. My mother seems a little…distracted? With her recent heart issues, this may not have been the wisest place to bring her. Even though it was her idea.

I decide to lighten the moment with a dopey joke I remember from junior high school.

ME: I bet you don’t know what makes this place so popular.

HER: What?

ME: People are dying to get in.

She smiles, a half smile.

“Are you thinking about Dad?”

“Yes,” she says, “as well as my parents and Grandma Miriam, and all the friends I’ve lost over the years.”

As a doctor, my mother is no stranger to death. I know she cut open a formaldehyde-filled body or two in medical school, and probably barely blinked. She looked so stoic at my father’s funeral. But maybe on the inside she was hurting more than I realized.

“You never get used to death,” she says. “We are all here for such a brief time and then it’s over…but never for the ones left behind.” She’s beginning to sound like a Hallmark card.

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