Brighten Your Day

My grandfather died when my dad was 14. His ashes were spread on a spot at a local cemetery. My grandmother never remarried and supposedly never even dated again.

40+ yrs later, my grandmother died. We spread her ashes on the same spot her husband was. Then, we went inside some building at the cemetery I didn't know about.

Apparently, this is where they kept personal records for the deceased. These books would have the name of the deceased, their date of death, a small note. and who they were "survived" by. Oftentimes there were spaces under their name for their spouses to be placed upon death.

My dad found his father's entry, and the space below for his mother. The note next to his dad said simply "Till we meet again." I asked my dad what we were going to write for his mum, though through welling eyes I already knew.

"We meet again" is all he said, and that was probably only the second or third time I've ever seen my dad cry. I bawled quietly as he wrote it all in the book. I never knew my grandfather, but I knew my grandmother very well. She'd always been content with my dad and us, never seemed to have any regrets. She read tonnes of romance novels. Sometimes she would say in a jovial tone that she's ready to move on and I would balk, but she'd just say "You'll understand when you're older."

I never knew the love they shared but it must have been something powerful. They were from a generation of Brits that didn't share their feelings as openly as later generations, so I know those few words scrawled in that book mean way more than their brevity might imply.