It's a horriday here....

All Soul's Day. You go to the cemetery. It's what everyone does. A cemetery today looks like the most beautiful garden you can imagine. So people remember and honour the dead.

Actually, it should have been yesterday, All Souls Day... never seemed logical to me to have it on November first.

And I would have gone, I suppose, I was in the mood for it. Exept... I know I wouldn't have been able to find either of the two I wanted to visit. Peter's mothers, and Jane's. When Peter's finances and his mind went south, the Church was after him for costs of 'maintainance', which is a joke... people tend to the graves themselves. And wanted 10,000 Euros for a ten year 'upkeep', uh-huh.

Charlotte was upset and confused that she couldn't find her sister's grave, so I guess they just did a turnover and someone else is in there now. I really don't know how that works. Except... forever isn't forever, you know?

And I wanted to see Gisela's grave, finally, and leave some roses. Gawd that was tragic. 'Gisi', as Peter's aunt called her, or Giselle, as we called her, was her old school friend, through thick and thin. And the war was pretty thin. She had a son out of wedlock, Horst. And she was Peter and my preferred dinner guest several times a year. The first time she came to dinner, I nearly blew it. She being advanced in years, I served a mild coffee... not knowing that she was your TOTAL caffeine addict. The dinner was great, she said, but the coffee offended her muchly.

Well no one had told me before-hand, demmit... The second time, I had my weapon ready. Peter found a place that sold cuban coffee. You know how they say one that's strong puts hair on your chest? That one would have turned you into a werewolf. Heart-stoppingly strong. And she said, 'Now THAT'S more like it!'

She would only eat chicken or fowl. Or as I once wrote a cousin, 'anything that flies', and she replied, 'even a Boeing 747?' ---which completely cracked me up.

And since she was only fixated on fowl... man, I had my work cut out for me. I had a new variant every time which she had never had before. Indian, Thai, so many variations I can't even recall them all. I'd gotten Lazarus, my first pc, so I got busy and printed out menu cards for the place settings, or in her case, sent one per mail as an invite. Sorta, 'we're having chicken, wanna come over?' Went all formal, place settings, the works. Martha Stewart would have been proud of me. Hell, Emily Post would have done a Snoopy dance.

I remember I did pheasant once, which she lurrrved. But the real highlight was inviting her to a 'real' American Thanksgiving dinner. I got the smallest turkey I could find, because she ate like a bird. But it still was very big. And we had just been in Venice, and there was this porcelain shop on the corner up from the hotel, and there was a tureen... it was a turkey. Peter and I took one look at one another and burst out laughing, and he went and bought it, just for Thanksgiving. Gawwd... I don't even know whatever happened to it.

It was hilarious to look at.

So the soup course was in that.

And I trotted out all the trimmings, and the damned turkey was so big, and unwieldy, well, we had this rolling bar on wheels, cleared off the top, and wheeled it in... and I will NEVER forget the look on her face. Gawd, I was such a star.... once.

And by the way, I think I was a very good cook. Once... People at the market would get samples, and demanded, demanded that I give them recipes. Coming from a people who really appreciate cuisine, that was high praise indeed, so am not being overbearingly conceited.

Giselle would watch us like a hawk, curious as to how we interacted, and she found us very funny and entertaining. But there was a back-story to that. Her son Horst. We always thought he must be gay, lived in Vienna with 'someone', but we never knew who... and to me at least, it was as if she were imagining how her son was living there. He came home every weekend to take care of her. Alone. Just imagine...

So he was sort of a ghost.

If Peter's aunt and uncle visited, it was a different story, and could get embarrassing. Giselle would always brag.... about me. It started with the fact that Peter's aunt and uncle liked seafood, so I made a salad for after the soup, seafood. (Yeah, I did four courses...) But I knew Giselle wouldn't touch it, so I made her a small plate of chicken salad.

And the one-upmanship began. 'He made that extra just for me.' 'I've seen every Christmas tree and Easter tree since they moved in, and they are wonderful.' Sort of nyah nyah, you're just pedestrian visitors....

Embarassed the hell out of me. So on one occasion, she pushed too hard, and his aunt said, 'Want me to tell them about your son in Frankfurt?' Dead silence.

(She'd been ragging on them about their obsession with using public transportation. And Peter had spoiled her, going out by taxi to pick her up, and take her home. In that, he was a gentleman. Plus he took her to visit them in Germany twice, where they had many adventures, the worst of which was her taking his small bag through security when leaving, and Peter's insulin needle was in there. That took some explaining, but she'd never HAD an adventure before, so she relived it and reminisced often.)

I last saw her two and a half years ago. She had been ill for a long time, so was spared the decline and fall of the Mühlgasse, thank whomever. But I was with his aunt and his cousins, so we didn't get to talk all that much... I felt it was their time. So I went into the garden to smoke. And there came the ghostly Horst. A pudgy, middle-aged man who somehow struck me as looking a bit pasty and not well. We made small talk, and am sure he was as curious about me as I was about him.

The only thing we knew about the 'scandal' involving him was that as a young man, he stayed with Peter's aunt and uncle in Frankfurt, and got into big trouble, and they bailed him out. Whatever it was happened in the Bahnhof (train station) district. I've been there... in Frankfurt... it was like 42nd street in the 70's, gritty, lots of vice, lots of sleaze, lots of prostitutes of all genders. For some reason we think he picked up a guy. And it was illegal in his youth. That's all we'll ever know.

Everything else was connecting the dots from snippets of conversation, and pure speculation.

Whatever, about three weeks after I was out at her house in the suburbs, her son had been home more, caring for her, was reading the morning paper, and Horst fell off his chair immediately dead. Stroke AND a heart attack. I always wondered what happened to his long-time Viennese 'companion'. Giselle had him buried so fast, I doubt he would have been notified.

Three weeks after that... Giselle died. A year later Peter's aunt came to visit her grave... and couldn't find it. 'It's just LIKE her... making secrets out of nothing.' (a-HA!)

Y'know, the Soaps always preach that secrets always come out. In this case? äääähhhh. Wrong.

It doesn't matter. I've long learned that what you 'think' is the truth always gets a spin that leaves you saying 'WHAAA?'

So that's a day of the dead memory I wished to share today. Because my memories are fond ones and make me smile, and to honour a remarkable lady. heh, I remember thinking I'd found a sapling of the apricot tree on the side of the house and had planted it in front of the kitchen window. She looked down, and had a laughing fit. 'Son, I don't know what that is, but it is NOT an apricot tree, believe me.' (she had a fantastic garden). Of course it turned out to be a walnut tree.... blush. She laughed so hard... 'don't you know that birds drop seeds on the ground and sometimes they take hold? Just because it was at the foot of the tree doesn't mean it's an apricot tree.'

Nope... never learned about that side of the birds and the bees, unfortunately.

And unfortunately... there are also memories of an awful lot of other people long passed on, but they are the painful ones. People who died way too early, people who were ill from youth and succumbed, people very special to me.

One of them had diabetes from an early age. And I was fortunate enough to visit with her for a few hours when I was last in NH. Her thing from teenager on was having picnics in cemeterys... 'because we're all going to end up here, you know....' Yeah, sounds macabre, but it seemed to give her some sort of comfort.

So it was a day of remembering here, and honouring past people whom one loved. Which is nice. I don't ever remember anything like that growing up. People died, you went to the cemetery and see them buried, end of story. Here there is a hypocritical side to it... see and be seen. Outdoing someone else in floral arrangements. Which is petty.

So I didn't get to any of the cemeteries today. But thought about and honoured them in my own way.