The Old Quadra Street Cemetery was a lovesome place, but now it was as full as the law would allow. So they put a change and a padlock round the pickets of the gate to keep the dead in and the living out, and dedicated a new portion of cleared raw land at Ross Bay for Victoria’s burying. It was a treeless, wind-swept place of gravely soil and blaring sunshine. One side of the “New Cemetery” was bound by the sea. It was raised about it be a medium high rough grassy bank. The other side was bounded by the highway, over which ran periodically a noisy rural tram line.
Like all public projects, there was a good deal of wrangling over the changed location. The whole town, Small’s father and his family included, went out to inspect the New Cemetery. One person thought this, and one that, about it. It was so different from the old cozy, near-in cemetery that was so easy of access. However, we supposed we had to grow, and cemeteries could not go on expanding in the middle of cities. We might as well swallow Ross Bay as a burying ground and stop fussing.
But how different they were! The hard cold gravestones of the old plan were gentled by the vines and brambles that tied them together in a friendly fashion. The tall trees around the border, that had leaves with silvery white backs, dappled by the overgrown greenery of the graves with shadow.
At first the old-timers cried out at carrying their dead to the bare new lonesome place. The graves looked so sparse and desolate with the great empty spaces between. No hugging brambles, no twining honeysuckle, everything bleak and raw, new and rough, nothing to tie the grave to gave chummily. The dry grass parched quickly under the glaring sun, perpetual wind off the sea rattled and creaked among it up on the ridge.
To be eligible to lie in the Old Cemetery, you only had to be dead, there was no sorting of race and creed. In the new, it was different. The High and Low Church did not mix, nor could the Roman Catholics, Jews, Presbyterians and Atheists lie beside each other,; they had different part assigned to them.
In 1886, Small’s mother died. It was the first time that a death in the house had been experienced by the younger members of the family. Stillness fall on their home, their garden, on the whole world it seemed. In the house, the hush centred in the drawing room where Small’s mother lay in her coffin., at peace after her long, long suffering. Serenely indifferent to the hurt that was all about her. She who had been so sumpathetic to the smallest suffering of any of her family.
Father sat in the old “praying chair” in the sitting room all day, not only for family worship. He was broken, silent, not even ashamed of the tears that would run down, hurrying to hide in his beard. His eyes stared but they looked at nothing.
Upstairs the family and some neighbours who had come to help were sewing black. On the bed lay a huge role of silk crepe. It had cost of lot of money, that crepe, but there were five women to be clothed in mourning, besides that armlets on Fathers and Dick’s coats and on all our overcoats. We wanted to show Mother every atom of respect we could, and in 1996 that was one of the ways to do it.
Small was not much help in the sewing room upstairs. For the moment, the nearly blind old lady who insisted on coming to trim our hats was supplied with a pincushion full of threaded needles, and all the basting threads were puled out of the sewing till more were put in. Small was appointed “Odd Jobs” one of which is to look in on Father often and see that he wanted nothing. Small was afraid to speak. She just passed through the room, in at one door, out at the other.
He called, “Small!”
“Yes, Father.”
“Tell your sisters I wish to speak to them, Small.
“Very well, Father.” They circled around his chair.
“I have called you,” Small’s father said, “to discuss with you the choosing of the family burial plot. It is a question that concerns us all. We shall all lied there eventually, myself beside your mother before long. ‘Three score and ten’, that is God’s allotted age for Man.”
Father always maintained that statement, and kept up to time two years later. Small held that Father would have thought it equivalent of given God “back-chat” not to have died at the age of three-score and ten years.
It was the first time that Father had allowed his children to have a voice in family affairs. Bigger and Middle’s minds had not been considered adult enough; as for Small, she was not sure now whether she was to have voice or not.
Her father looked at his two eldest daughters who shook their heads then looked at Bigger and Middle.
Bigger said, “You choose, Father,” And Middle said nothing.
Small stepped a little closer to the praying chair hoping to remind her Father she was there. He was reminded of Small.
“And you?” he said, sensing her eagerness.
“I choose the spot the first time we went to see the New Cemetery, Father.”
“That was strange. Why?”
“I just liked it, not much, but better than the rest.”
“Why did you like it?”
“It seemed to me the only comfortable spot in all the cold bleakness. It has two willow trees growing on it, the only trees in the whole New Cemetery. It lies in a little hollow right in the centre of Ross Bay’s curve. The sea gulls swoop in from one end of Ross Bay, circle the two willows and circle out again, carrying their cries out to sea.”
Father frowned. “I do not like that low-laying dip, Small. It is dame, unhealthy.”
The Elder said, “Trees on graves are not good.”
“Why?”
“Their roots creep about and pierce into the seams of coffins. It is a horrible idea.”
“I think it would be splendid to be useful to the earth after you were no more use to yourself, splendid to feed a tree!” said Small.
The Elder was all ready with a tongue click of disgust when Father closed the conversation by saying, “Here is the undertaker. Get your hats on.” He nodded to Small. “You are to come as well as your oldest sister.” Small felt important, almost grown up.
The Elder’s face was unpleasant when she saw the scrawny, hungry-looking little willows. Father frowned at the comparative nearness of the willow to the bank. He said, “They’ve talked long about that retaining wall, dear knows when they will build it. Meantime, time tide breakers are dashing against the bank. That’s bad.”
The undertaker came from the cemetery lodge. He had a plan of the cemetery plots in his hands. “This way, sir. The better class plots are up on the ridge.”
Father did not care a bit about the style but he wanted the best there for Mother. High, dry, healthy. He bought the ridge. He leant a little heavily on Small’s shoulder as he climbed the slight incline as though he felt the weight of his three score years and ten. He saw Small turn for a last look at the two willow trees, after his decision was made. “Small, you got your love of trees from me.” He smiled down at the little girl, feeling her disappointment.
Someone else bought the plot with the willows. The willows thrived and grew sturdy and beautiful. Small always felt a little cheated when from the ridge she looked into the hollow and saw the willows.
Up on the ridge the wind always blew and the sun always scorched and brittled the grass between the graves. A streetcar rattled every twenty minutes. The sea gulls never troubled to come that far inland to cry for the dead., nor were they any drooping willow boughs to sweep across the graves. Small used to wonder if the dead felt any healthier up there than down in the hollow.
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