In the summer of 1983, I spent three weeks driving around Germany with my parents. One stop we made was in the city of Worms where, as it happened, we had some distant family dad had connected us to. In the short time we had together, this third cousin took us to lunch, to the Cathedral, and to the nearby cemetery where family and friends were buried. It was tucked right in town, by the church, and each plot was a masterpiece of landscaping, glorious flowers, each tended by family members and each one different but lush, colorful, vibrant.

And this cousin also showed us the plot where he himself was to be buried.

The full integration of death into life caught us off-guard, but of course made complete sense. There was a comfort in it, an acceptance of death’s inevitability and a preparation for eternal rest even as part of life. There was also an embracing of it as a community. Their family and friends who had passed were visited on a regular basis, the graves tended, their memories kept alive, and the knowledge that when they themselves passed that they, too, would be visited, remembered, and cared for, was a part of their lives.

Growing up, I always knew that my dad’s dad died in 1935 when my dad was only seven. Every week for years my grandmother would take my father to visit his grave at the Friedhof Wilmersdorf in the Grunewald area of Berlin. I imagine this practice stopped after some time, at the very least when the war began, but dad was so familiar with the layout of this vast cemetery that when we visited in 1995 he was able to take us directly to the grave of both of his parents, walking us through the woods, around the lake, through all the gardens right to where he had started those visits 60 years previously.

When my mom passed in 2002, dad began the same pattern that his mother had, but stepped it up a bit: not a day went by, for years and years, when he didn’t visit her where she was laid to rest in Santa Monica. Every morning, he would take a coffee and the newspaper, as well as some flowers, and go sit on the bench that was next to her grave. In fact, we chose that plot for the very reason that the bench was there, under a stately old tree.

And when he was no longer able to drive, he took the bus, which, if you know Los Angeles public transportation, you’d have some idea of the lengths he went to to visit her!

I have found myself drawn to go sit on this same bench lately. I’ve been in Santa Monica more frequently, and the pull is just too great.

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And I have to say, it’s a powerful thing. To some extent because, whatever thoughts and emotions I may have, I feel a kinship with my dad who visited mom and his father, and with my grandmother who visited her husband. But, to be honest, it’s a puzzling thing.

What does it mean, exactly? Am I there for me, or for them? Are they more “there” than anywhere else? What is my intention, actually, in going there?

I know people whose parents were cremated, their ashes strewn over the ocean, over Catalina, over mountains, or else are in urns over the mantle.

What does any of this mean? Do I want mom or dad on my mantle? If I had strewn ashes in the ocean, would I feel closer to them at the beach? Would it matter? Does it matter that they’re in Santa Monica? And what if I were to move a great distance, such that “visiting” were impractical?

Frankly, that seems to be the norm. And I think that’s a big argument for the strewing or the mantle urn. My distant relation in Worms had integrated the cemetery into his quotidian life, in large part because of the many, many generations of family buried there, and his expectations of his descendants also remaining in Worms. The geographic stability permits the establishment of deep roots, whereas our mobility cuts us off from the past generations, and from any confidence about future ones, hence a disconnect from a tie to a specific location where we feel a connection to those who have passed.

So I’ve been pondering: do any of my friends visit their parents’ graves? It clearly isn’t just a European thing as cemeteries, of course, exist here. And I have a feeling that dad’s, and his mother’s, daily or weekly visits were not the norm. But what is?

The flipside, though, is that now when I go to Santa Monica and DON’T “stop by,” there’s a twinge of guilt that didn’t used to be there.

But when I do go, as I said before, what does it mean? For what purpose?

The fact is, when I go, for some reason it’s hugely emotional. While I miss them all the time, I miss them MORE when I’m there, staring at the gravestone, it all just so unavoidable that they’re gone. But their spirit isn’t in the ground… their spirit is, well, wherever I imagine it to be. But there, under that tree, that’s where it feels the most poignant. That’s where things all come pouring out, thoughts and emotions I don’t even know I have when I’m not sitting on dad’s bench. Regret, loss, a void, apologies, all of it comes tumbling out. Cathartic? No. I long for their opinions on whatever is going on; I ache for interaction, and even as the questions I seek answers to get increasingly hectic in my brain, of course the silence is ever more evident.

But is it? Some answers of course one will never know. But there are times when I hear a wailing, either actually vocalized or silently in my mind: “WHAT DO I DO?” “HOW DID ALL THIS HAPPEN?” “IS THIS WHAT YOU ENVISIONED MY LIFE TO BE?” “ARE YOU PROUD OF ME?” “DID YOU ALWAYS KNOW I LOVED YOU?” “DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU NOW?” “DID I DO RIGHT BY ALL YOU GAVE ME?”

And immediately there is a calming response, a soothing sense of stillness, a blanket of warmth and love, and a languageless washing away of concern, an approbation felt if not heard.

And to the other questions, the questions that seem only to arise with our own maturity - read, aging - at a time when no answer is possible, those get shouted into the void, the only response those we imagine ourselves. At least for now.

The hardest part of all, though, is turning away from the stone, from their grave, and walking back to my car. At times I turn back again, ready but not ready to leave. Each time is another saying of good bye, another leave-taking. But I know dad did this same thing, every day when he visited mom. As did his mother, visiting her late husband. As do people, every day, all around the world. And while that step isn’t an easy one, it’s one as surely tied to death as is life, a step that unites us, all of humanity, in our contending with loss, and love, and life, and death.