John Gfroerer lives in Concord.
It was the beginning of our second week stay at Chautauqua in Western New York and we needed to make trip into Mayville for a few groceries. After picking my daughter Brinkley up at Girls Club, she and I hopped in the car and headed into town.
At the time, she was only six years old, and a full day at Club took a heap of energy. A five-minute drive and we pulled into the A&P parking lot, she was sound asleep. I decided to let her have the nap, but not in the parking lot. A few minutes farther down the road, I found some shade trees in the Mayville Cemetery. There we parked and as she slept, I read a book.
After half an hour I was about to start the car and pull out when I noticed two granite tombstones off to my left. One said, “John M. Seymour, 1824 –1892.” The other, “Helen B. Seymour, 1841-1932.” I paused for a moment, as if John and Helen were nearby wanting to tell me their story. I began to wonder about their lives together. No mention was made of when they got married. Maybe they weren’t, maybe they were brother and sister. But I preferred to think they were husband and wife. It was clear that he was 17 years her senior, probably not unusual at that time. Not really that unusual now.
It was also clear that she lived on for forty years after he died.
I wondered about their lives together, the changes they saw. Were there children? Did they live nearby? Did they go to Chautauqua for concerts or lectures or just a Sunday afternoon? Did they always live in Mayville?
What was their love like?
Did they make each other happy or was their relationship just what needed to be done and they did it, something defined by chores and duties rather than love?
I preferred to think they loved, that they were truly each other’s soulmates. After all, she did wait forty years to join him again. Perhaps there were others in the interim, but still, she held the name. She held that spot in the ground. I wondered, are they together now?
Over one hundred years ago they loved each other until death did cause them to part. Now they are united here on Earth for all to see and know, there in a little cemetery in Mayville, New York. Years and years after their passing, stones stand together marking not just their remains, but their union.
I thought of Lisa, my life partner. I thought of how we would look at elderly people walking together and say, “you and me babe.” It was an affirmation of our commitment to each other. I have never wanted a tombstone, or even to be buried, but I did want the richness of a relationship that lasts to the last. I hoped John and Helen had that.
My guess is that they had thirty, maybe thirty-five years together. She lived longer on this earth without him than with him. But from what I could tell, she never went looking again. She waited, through wars, inventions, first flight, moving pictures, radio, automobiles, refrigeration, maybe even the election of Franklin Roosevelt as Governor of New York. She waited through it all to join him again in whatever form they are now.
I know they didn’t drive a car like mine with air conditioning and power windows or listen to CDs or buy Chex Mix and cheese curd to take back to Chautauqua for an afternoon treat along the lake. But once, many years ago, they came to the very spot where I was parked and decided that here was where they wanted to be buried together.
I want to believe that Helen came back often after John’s death and burial. Maybe she read books in the shade like I was doing. Maybe she brought a grandchild asleep in a stroller and when they awoke shared stories of grandpa. Maybe in the afternoon quiet she would talk to him and say how much she missed him and ask what to do about putting up the storm windows before winter. She had lost her love, but she knew it was only temporary. And here in this cemetery during those years of separation, perhaps she felt she was with him again. For four decades she waited.
Those years they had together when he was on this earth must have been rich and blessed.
Though Brinkley remained asleep, I started the car and pulled out of the cemetery. Near the highway there was a flock of about thirty or forty Canadian Geese wandering around, blocking the road. I drove through them carefully, keenly aware that only I would treasure the experience. I thought of waking Brinkley but decided against it. I thought of how Lisa would have loved to have been here to see them.
I thought of Helen, pulling out after one of her visits. I thought of her and me, a hundred years apart, alone in our experiences, taking that right turn onto the road back to Mayville.