Take it to the grave (or from)

This weekend I got the police called on me over a rainbow sun catcher garden stake I placed at my father’s grave. How you ask? Well it had been there for less than 24 hours, my sister, husband,  myself, and brother in law showed up to the grave the next day on our way out of town to place flowers there, and the stake was missing. Now who would take something from a grave you ask? There was only one answer. My aunt.

In a town like Fort Kent, everyone knows everyone, and everyone knows everything. I knew where my aunt lived because I have stayed there many times throughout my life, even in adulthood, before she decided my sister and I were to blame for all of my dad’s mental health struggles. So 5 minutes later, we pulled up in her driveway. All I wanted was to get the garden stake I paid for back. If she wouldn’t tolerate it at her brother’s grave, then I would take it home and put it in my garden. That way it would be my own memorial I could visit anytime I wanted. I did scatter some of my dad’s ashes over my garden back in the winter anyway.

I got out of the car with my husband, and we went to ring the doorbell. I rang one time, and waited for her or her husband to answer the door. Just the inside door was opened, so I was left with a view of my aunt through the plexiglass door just staring at me and shaking her head, ice cream cone in hand. I waited for her to speak, she didn’t, so I did. I asked for the garden stake back. She immediately got reactive towards my request and told me no. She said I had no right, and that she didn’t want it there. I asked multiple times, and yes, I even yelled back that it is my father’s grave. These are some of the only people I will go ahead and yell back at, because they don’t know how to speak calmly first before escalating into a yell. Within seconds her husband came to the door, poked his head out, and asked us to leave, I believe 3 times. When we said no he pulled out his phone and said the cops will be here in 3 minutes. I’m pretty certain I responded; “good”.

You never really know what you’ll get with a police officer in a place like Fort Kent. Everyone knows everyone and everything after all, or at least that’s how it seems. Luck was on our side that day, or maybe it was logic that prevailed.

The officer that arrived was a young man, and a seemingly reasonable one at that. My sister, husband, and I stood outside my car with our id’s ready to go. We also pulled up the receipt for the garden stake and the receipt for my dad’s ashes that my aunt did not pay for. We knew there was no reason for us to get in trouble. We aren’t the ones that stole from a grave after all. Bad juju if you ask me.

We told him our story. That our dad had killed himself, and our aunt was telling people that we are the reason why, and that she was angry with us. We told him how we went to the cemetery the day prior and placed a rainbow garden stake at his grave, and when we returned today it was gone. We let him know that all we wanted was the stake, and that they would not give it back. Thankfully the officer assigned to handle this mess had never even heard any of this gossip.

When he went over to speak to my aunt and her husband, he did most of the speaking while she played the part of innocent victim to stalking and harassment. To cooberate that story, they pulled out the hannaford receipt I had written on and placed on my aunt’s windshield the day prior. The note I left said, “Stop telling people our dad killed himself because of us :) - your favorite bitches.” This is the part where she’s confused, and I’ll give her that. She didn’t see the note the day prior when she drove home, but we have photo evidence to backup our claims. It was serendipitous that we were at Hannaford at the same time as her after we visited the grave and placed the stake there. We spotted her down an aisle as we were getting butter, but she didn’t see us. We realized it was her car an aisle over from us outside, so we decided to leave a message. Was it necessary? Depends who you ask. But you’re listening to a daughter who’s been blamed for her father’s death by his sister’s for half a year now. Of course I’m going to feel some type of way.

We could over hear some of what they were telling the officer, which included; that we were stalking them, harassing them on Facebook, and this is the 3rd thing that’s happened. Us showing up to ask for something back that I purchased and placed at my dad’s grave is considered the third thing I have done to them? I hope this does get around to them so they can chew on those words for a bit and think about just who did what to who here. The way I see it, they stole from my dad in the after life, not from me. And that is next level bone chilling cold.

Obviously we know the stalking isn’t true since I’ve now told you about the coincidence of running into my aunt at the one grocery store in town. As for the Facebook harassing, I don’t even have Facebook, and neither does my sister besides the messenger app. She did message her letting her know we would be attending the funeral. I forgot to mention that part. There was supposed to be a funeral on May 23rd, the reason I booked the airbnb for us to be up there in the first place. The funeral was cancelled within days of receiving the message from my sister. It’s also not that easy to get a funeral cancelled by the way… you have to go through the bishop in Portland… I wonder what they told them was the reason for needing to cancel a service. Anyway, here’s the message my sister sent my aunt with no response back, word for word:

“I have wanted to reach out for a while now but I haven’t really had many words I could think of saying. I do want to say thank you for the card in December with the kind words. I had been wondering up to that point if my dad had shared that I spoke with him on my birthday. I am glad he did, and glad it meant as much to him as it did to me. It gives me peace knowing we could express our love for one another before he passed away even though at that point we could not have the relationship he wanted.The primary purpose of this message is to let you know that Audrey and I will be attending our dad’s service. You do not have to be invited to a funeral, but we didn’t want to drop in without letting you know in advance. I know you have your opinions about Audrey and I and you are entitled to have them. We are all entitled to our feelings no matter what they are. In the end he was our father and the only one either of us need to answer to regarding our relationship with our dad is ourselves. We know we loved him and he loved us and that is ultimately what matters the most. With all of that being said we would like to ask if we could speak at the funeral. We understand if the answer is no but we wanted to see if you would allow it. We fought his fight with him for the entirety of our lives. We shared laughs with him. We shared tears with him. He was our first hairdresser. He was the first man either of us loved. He gave us life and we feel we could do him justice. Again though…we understand if you say no, and understand if you need to think on it to come to a decision. We also understand that you do not owe us this. We just wanted to ask. At the end of the day we are family. We will all be together at his will and I hope that for one day that we will be able to put feelings aside and show our father the love that he gave everyone else in his life. I love you and care about you and we will see you in May.”

*mic drop*

You have to be delusional to think that message is a form of harassment. My sister and I didn’t want to fight about any of this, but enough is enough. I’m privy to think that my aunt and the rest of the family do read my blog as I have casually spoken about the situation at hand in other posts of mine. I theorize that it is those very posts that have fed her delusions that we are harassing her. If anyone is offended by my truth that I have chosen not to keep secret, maybe it’s because it puts to bed the lies that have been spoken about me and my sister. Our truth is a direct threat to the stories they have chosen to believe. And it’s not like we haven’t tried to talk to them civilly about all of this first either. I had a 45 minute long conversation with his other sister the same weekend my sister messaged my aunt on FB. She was the most reasonable of them all, but still, aggravating. I was told directly from that aunt when the funeral was still being held that it’s best that we don’t come. That we weren’t invited. Once I responded back challenging those statements with things like “you don’t have to be invited to a funeral.” And “What are you going to do have body guard there and kick us out?” She said alright you can come. How generous.

We got over the fact that they cancelled the service, and kept our airbnb booking and went up to celebrate him in our own way. We ate lobsters and steamers, one of his favorite meals, and drank cosmos and lemon drop martinis. Both drinks we shared with him in our early 20’s. We played uno, a family favorite game, and watched home videos he took of us as children. We soaked in the hot tub every chance we got, and bonded as a group of siblings; my husband, his brother, me, and my sister. When we went to the grave for our version of a service, we pulled tarot, drank cosmos, wore colorful outfits, listened to Elton John, and placed the rainbow garden stake at the head of his grave stone. This was to symbolize what he struggled with most throughout his life, his identity as a gay man. Something he became most proud of, and what we were most proud of him for too. It’s nothing we would ever want to hide, and this felt like one of the most beautiful ways we could honor him. Rainbows will now always make me feel connected with my dad.

I am proud of my sister and I’s ability to not let our aunt’s rain on our parade. It would be easy to use their gatekeeping of our grief as an excuse not to mourn our dad, but they have no right to say how we should or should not grieve him. The heaviest lifting of our grief has worn us out through the winter, and we are in a place where letting in the love that did exist for him feels easier to do now. We don’t act out to upset our aunt’s, we only do what feels right in our heart’s to signify the love we had for our father. That is why the garden stake was our choice of a gift. If we wanted to make our aunt’s angry, we would’ve put a tacky sticker about being gay on the grave stone.

Before we even went up to Fort Kent, we both had a feeling our aunt might remove the stake when she saw it. I didn’t want to believe that to be true, but ultimately, our feelings were correct. I understand that grief makes people do crazy things, and I presume that her acting how she is, is a result of that grief. I also have no idea what lies my father has led her to believe about my sister and I in the years he was alive. I know he had it in him to say hurtful things about us, and he vastly misunderstood us as well. After all, he was severely mentally ill. I think taking your own life is enough to prove that point.

By the grace of God, or maybe the spirit of my father, we got the coveted garden stake back. After the police officer heard both my sister and I’s story, and my aunt and uncle’s story, he came back over to us and let us know that he can’t do anything about it today. He told us no crime has been committed, while staring into my soul and letting me know he’d like to keep it that way, and hopefully we would too. Well duh… I don’t have a record and wasn’t in interested in starting one. He told us that we would have to go through the court system and file something in order to get it back. I had my husband start recording to make sure we got all of the proper information. My aunt’s husband could hear this conversation as he sat on their front step. At some point he must have decided that this was all ridiculous, and they don’t want their names in the court system, because he grabbed the garden stake out of their car and said “I would be happy to give this back.” Thank you to my angels for instilling some logic into him. He gave it to the officer, who handed it to me, making sure he maintained distance between us. I felt like an animal with rabies that they wanted off their property. When I grabbed the stake back I said thank you, apologized to the officer for the inconvenience, and we went on our way, home to Southern Maine.

Telling this story so far has made others feel a bit bad that we have had to go through this. To me, and I’m sure my sister too, we have been through much more turmoil with our father, which felt like preparation for a moment such as this. My father’s temper was not always present, but when it was, it was explosive. That is something that I have had to learn to tame in myself in adulthood. I think anger and rage are valuable emotions to work with, when used for the greater good. Looking back now, as it’s been almost a week, I feel proud of the parts of my dad that live in me and have gotten to be expressed for positive change. I am proud that I did not back down, and grateful to have siblings (brother in law included) and a husband that support my demand for justice. The only person I feel bad for, is my aunt that cannot seem to find her forgiveness and peace. I do hope for the sake of herself and all those around her, that she will one day find it, and let go of the hatred that lives in her heart.