Never again forget April 8, 2024
The only thing I recall vividly from that moment in the summer of 1968 was just how great the girl’s breasts were, when she stripped down and asked me to go skinny-dipping with her.
So consumed with the memory of her, I could not even remember
where the place was, even though as I later learned, it played a huge role in
my family’s history as well as history of development that saw the change over
from Dutch farming to the industrial revolution in the late 1880s.
I must have passed over the place thousands of times when
living in Passaic during the late 1970s and most of the 1980s. But it was only
during one of my visits to Peggy’s gravesite that the pieces of the puzzle fell
into place.
I returned there yesterday, taking a brief tour of the old
neighborhood before doing laundry in the laundromat on River Drive and making
my pilgrimage to Peggy’s grave – a trek I’ve made at least four times a year
since I found out about her passing. She committed suicide in 1999. I didn’t
learn of her passing until a decade later, and then spent hours searching for
her particular grave in the small cemetery, going row by row by row, hoping
that my information was mistaken, and when finally coming upon it, almost
regretted my search.
Yet for all these visits – in which I left an assortment of
gifts, including flowers, a stuff bear, a New York Giants emblem and such – I never
once looked at the rear side of the grave stone, never noticing two more names
that had been carved there – two family members that had died the same year she
did.
Peggy is buried in her great grandparents’ grave. She used
to tell me her grandmother would never die. This may be understandable since
her grandmother lived to the ripe old age of 103, passing away only a few years
before Peggy did.
During this trip, I brought no gifts, and noticed that most
of the previous gifts have vanished with only a small ceramic angel still decorating
the grave I alone continue to visit. Over the years, new names appeared – her father’s,
then both her sisters, leaving almost no one but me to continue the ritual.
My visits to the neighborhood served as a remembrance of my
best friend, Paulie, who died early in 2020, and yet has no grave to visit, so
I tend to visit places where he lived, including the still-standing place in
Passaic, where for a decade he lived, occasionally with me.
But the swimming hole remembrance always eluded me – even though
the dip into the waters of Saddle River came about the same time I met Paulie.
I remembered what the place looked like and how the water
felt swirling around my naked body, and how I reacted to her naked body
swimming a few feet away – my thought focusing on what I thought would happen,
but never did, and my last memory of her when she climbed out naked on the
other side, and vanished.
I never saw her again. But I think of her each time I’ve
come here since, just as I think about making love to Peggy when she still
lived only a few blocks from where she is buried.
These are memories to treasure, even if they are also sad.
The feel of it, the water, the attraction, this sense of time. I will never
again forget.
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