Down to Earth

By Nan DePlume

 Installment Five: In which our hero inches into adulthood and contemplates mortality.

Now that I’m in my 50s, perhaps it’s finally here: the time to grow the hell up.

I’m not exactly sure how I wound up as a middle-aged child. I guess that while others were making plans and racking up milestones, I was engaged in enjoying the moment. When I wasn’t dreading or regretting the moment. And OK, sleeping through the moment a couple of times. All that time indulging in moments and their aftermath adds up, I guess.

There are coffee mugs and refrigerator magnets emblazoned with rueful jokes about “forgetting” to have a husband, kids, or a career—but never all three. So I suppose they’ll never make a rueful coffee mug for me.

I’m not sure I need one. I like having a man around sometimes, but never all the time. Which means that being single feels right, at least most days. Same for skipping motherhood. I figure it’s a wash: I didn’t give up the prime of my life to care for a young person, so I’ll wind up fending for myself as an old person. It strikes me as a decent deal.

And sure, I don’t have a career, at least in the way that many people define the term: a vocation that involves promotions, bonuses, and free office supplies. But my freelance graphic-design gig spares me the horrors of workaholic bosses, tedious co-workers, and speculation about the culprit who swiped my mango yogurt from the office refrigerator. All in all, I’m at peace with my trifecta of “forgotten” adult experiences.

* * * *

But it seems that even I can’t avoid maturity forever. As generally happens, my nudge into adulthood came from another generation: not a younger one, like with new parents; but in my case, an older one. My steady and protective father died a year ago, leaving my brother and me with a little bit of money and the responsibility of watching out for my 85-year-old mother, who’s perennially a bit bewildered. Not from dementia, or even age; she’s been that way as long as any of us can remember. She’s the kind of person who charms and amuses everyone she encounters, but can’t operate a microwave or remember to pay for the electricity that runs it.

The money and responsibility Dad left us prompted me to do just about the most grown-up thing I can think of: buy myself a house in the semi-rural town mom and dad retired to, which is an hour and a half north of San Francisco. The name of my new hometown is Cloverdale, and I now have an actual small house there—with a little land around it, even. I’m not at all sure what I’ll do with that tiny patch of land, but the fact remains: there is now dirt on this planet that has my name on it. And that dirt is in Cloverdale, a place name evoking a 1950s sitcom, which makes me alternatingly happy and panicky.

Besides the dirt that surrounds my house, when Dad died, I discovered that I own a second piece of earth: the burial plot adjoining the one for my father and mother. Ever the family anchor, Dad purchased two plots about ten years ago: one for the two of them, the other for me and the lucky stiff who will share decomposition with me.

Every week or two, I visit the Gate of Heaven Cemetery, which is a mile from my mother’s place and about five from mine. I stand on the green manicured grass and try not to think about what’s fertilizing it. I contemplate the headstone with my father’s name on it, which also bears my mother’s name, complete with her birth year and a menacing hyphen.

When I’m standing at the Gate of Heaven, my thoughts often center around the loss of the beings whose decisions and desire brought me into the world. I think about how they existed before I did, and how I’ll exist after they’re gone. It strikes me that immediacy is all, or maybe corporeality is all. Without that you only see those you love through the foggy portals of anticipation or memory. And as I realize now that Dad is gone, that remove is devastating, in an existential as well as an animal sense.

Sometimes my imagination penetrates into the sanctum of my father’s coffin, and I wonder what’s going on with his body at that moment. More often, I wonder about the state and whereabouts of his spirit, something I care about far more, but find harder to imagine.

Other times, what strikes me when I’m at my father’s grave, and my mother’s future home in the earth, is the fact that when I look at their eternal abodes, I’m standing on mine. I examine the view, contemplating the dinky man-made lake with the even dinkier fountain that sputters, rather than rages, against gravity. An uninspiring prospect, but when I’m interred here, it won’t be my problem.

I guess the more immediate issue is who, if anyone, will be standing at my graveside. And who, if anyone, will wind up in the slot next to me. Burial plots don’t come cheap, so the fact that I not only have one, but come with an extra, might be a bonus in some eyes. Maybe, I think, I’ll add that detail to my OK Cupid profile.