In April of 1939, a grief-stricken Norwegian immigrant, demonstrating a family tendency toward sudden bursts of extravagance, plunked down the princely sum of $250 to buy a cemetery plot for his wife Laura, who had just passed away unexpectedly, leaving him and his two young sons bereft.  Although I never knew them, Emil and Laura Paulsen were my grandparents. 

The deed to the cemetery plot, dated 1939

We still have the deed to that plot, in what must have been a pretty swanky place, Ferncliff Cemetery, and the receipt, which stipulates monthly installments of $15.  I imagine it was a gift, a gesture of love and loss, his last gift to a wife lost far too soon.

Tragically, only about seven installments later, Emil too was dead – “of a broken heart” – and buried beside his wife at Ferncliff under the Norwegian inscription “HERREN ER MIN HYRDE,” or, “The Lord is my Shepherd.”

That Christmas in 1939 my father and his brother, shocked and angry to find themselves parentless at 17 and 21, dragged their Christmas tree out into the backyard and set it ablaze, decorations and all.

But the Lord was their Shepherd.  Their Aunt Marie and Uncle Ernst took the brothers in.  My father and uncle both served in World War II, went to college, had good careers and strong marriages, raised three children apiece.

And despite his act of bitterness toward God, the unfairness of life and the cruelty of death, that Christmas in 1939, all of his life, my father took great joy in life.  For over 55 years he could scarcely believe his good fortune to meet and marry our mother.  He threw himself wholeheartedly into his profession, his children, his friends.

Although my father earned his living as an attorney, his second career was his first love: He was a church organist.  

My father loved to “praise the Lord with the mighty organ,” “making a joyful noise unto the Lord.”  I can still hear the sly anticipation in his voice as he made his plans, as he said, to play so loudly he’d knock certain stuffy old parishioners right out of their pews.

Dad passed his love of life on to all of us.  When I was a kid (to my great irritation at the time) Dad woke me up for school, proclaiming “Arise, shine, for thy light has come!”  He sent me to bed with the words of Lewis Carroll, “The time has come, the walrus said.”  Once tucked in bed, I’d fall asleep to the sound of my father practicing the piano. 

Even now, as I cherish morning risings and evening settlings, I think of Dad.

He never talked much about death, but he told us details about the lives of the grandparents we never knew.  He told us that Laura baked delicious home-baked bread and let him eat it warm with honey. And that Emil planted clematis flowers in their garden.

Once Dad mentioned that his parents' cemetery was special because the grave markers were flush to the ground.  “It looks more like a park than a cemetery,” he said.

But even so, we never visited the graves, not even when Uncle Ernst and Aunt Marie died in their 90s (also within months of each other) and were buried alongside Emil and Laura.

So it surprised me when, last December as my father lay dying, my mother opened her file cabinet and produced the deed for the plot at Ferncliff.

My brother called the cemetery office.  It turned out there was no more room in the plot Emil had purchased in 1939 but the last two plots left in the old section of the cemetery were available, just large enough for cremated remains, so we purchased them both, one for Dad, and the other, eventually, for Mom.

When my brother and sister and I checked Ferncliff’s website, we were amused to learn that over the years, many prominent people were buried at Ferncliff: Judy Garland, Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz, Bela Bartok, James Baldwin, John Lennon, Yul Brynner, Jim Henson, Nelson Rockefeller and Christopher Reeve, among many others.  We chuckled to imagine our immigrant grandparents in such heady company.

Dad died last December and we had a beautiful memorial service in January (which I blogged about) at the church where he was organist for over 40 years.  But his cremated remains sat in Mom’s apartment, waiting for spring.

When spring came, my family gathered in the bright April sunshine to lay my father’s ashes in the ground at Ferncliff.

As we approached the plot, we noticed something on the tree nearby – a silly face stuck into the bark, as if the tree were smiling.  The cemetery worker didn’t know where it came from, and she assured us it would be removed -- it was not in keeping with Ferncliff’s tasteful style. 

But I had a feeling Dad would have gotten a kick out of that tree, smiling its goofy smile on all of us as if to say, "Why so glum?"

The minister read the 23^rd Psalm, “The Lord in my Shepherd.”  We stood in silence as the cemetery worker shoveled soil over the small box, the rhythmic crunch of the earth filling the hole.   With each shovelful, I felt the emptiness in my own heart fill up.

I realized how blessed I was to have Dad for a good long time, until he was 91 -- complete with his puns and word play, his music, each precious day marked in my own heart by his early-morning chant of "Rise and shine for thy light has come!" and his evening announcement, "The time has come the walrus said."

And I realized that this was, in a way, the completion of Emil's gesture back in 1939, for my father to be laid to rest here, at Ferncliff, in good company with Judy Garland and Malcolm X, Nelson Rockefeller and Christopher Reeve -- but more importantly, just a stone’s throw away from the plot that Emil Paulsen bought for his wife Laura, almost exactly 70 years earlier.

Dad's family all together, at his 8th grade graduation.

  

Then, each family member, from my 7-year-old niece to my 82-year-old mother, took a spring flower from the basket my mother had brought and placed it on Dad’s grave.

We walked over to the graves of Emily and Laura, and someone translated the Norwegian inscription, “HERREN ER MIN HYRDE.” “The Lord is my Shepherd.”

Happy Father’s Day, Dad.  And thanks.