A dreaded sunny day
Last Sunday, a year and a day after my mom died, my brother and I took a drive to see if we could find a certain cemetery where many of our mom's family are buried. :Mom's sister JoAnn had talked to Scot about it at another recent family funeral, and we decided to take a look and see if we liked it better than Mt. Lebanon Cemetery, which is where our parents bought their plots.  

It really seems like one should buy one's plot at the beginning of one's story, rather than at the end. I would like a plot filled with mystery and intrigue and one of those montages where I try on a bunch of expensive outfits. 

I don't like the people at Mt. Lebanon Cemetery. I mean the live people. They are snooty and callous and our Funeral Director gave us the inside track that the "hill" on which my parents' plot is is actually a man-made hill, or really just a pile of dirt, which they created and which explains (1) why iit s was cheap enough to appeal to my thrifty parents and (2) why there is some nonsense about what kind of markers we can and cannot put on the ground.  I understand that everyone needs to make a living and it's all just real estate but there is something so very Poltergeist about the whole thing. So Scot and I are looking around for another place for my parents, and decided to try and find this cemetery that Aunt JoAnn mentioned.

We didn't have directions or a brochure or a guide with us, but we did have two small pieces of paper with possible names of the place and my uncanny sense of direction. Scot had distinctly remembered Aunt JoAnn saying that the place was off of Arla Drive.  Arla Drive is a long winding residential road in Green Tree that could conceivably butt up against Carnegie, which is where we thought the place was. We both went to school with folks who grew up on Arla, and never heard them ever talk about hanging out at the cemetary, but that really didn't thwart us because, well, people from Green Tree have historically been odd in the sense that that is just the kind of thing they would never mention about themselves and also, Green Tree itself is so anomalous. First of all, there is Green Tree and then Green Tree City, which seems to be a subset of the former, but which is only really discussed in secret Green Tree Proper meetings. Also, Green Tree has a Bermuda Triangle type quality regarding its borders which seem to be fluid. If you're on the highway LOOKING for Green Tree, you can easily miss it by going by it in a second, but when you are actually inside Green Tree, you can drive around for forty minutes in all directions and never seem to get anywhere. It has abandoned railroad yards, and cows, and a lake which only appears to certain people on certain days like Narnia or Brigadoon, and lots of legends around its "whiskey hollow" area. It's an odd place, and the little towns surrounding it like Carnegie, Crafton and Scott Township get a little bit of the oddness rubbed off on them too. 

All of this being offered in explanation of why I wasn't really nonplussed when we had driven all around Arla Drive and still not found the cemetery. Scot was employing some kind of Douglas Adams theory about finding the place, which involved instinct and intuition and the Holy Spirit and following some other car. That is a fine way to navigate a place like Green Tree if you ask me. But with each disappointing turn of the road, he was remembering his conversation with Aunt JoAnn differently. It wasn't Arla. It was Swallow Hill. Or Forsythe. I'm telling you, it's like ALIENS founded Green Tree and embued it with a disorientation spell as some kind of protective force field. Even our little pieces of paper were affected. According to them we were looking for Mount Olivet Cemetery, part of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish, formerly St. Luke's. Now, we all know that everything in Pittsburgh is formerly some other thing. Especially in the South Hills, and especially if it is Catholic. So, really, while other people from cities with more logical urban planning would have insisted on better information even before beginning (In Chicago for example, the entire city is set out like a GRID and every location can be narrowed down to its x and y coordinates...wusses) we felt as well armed as most Pittsburghers feel when they're heading out for a picnic at a coworker's house on a Sunday. And in this sense, in Pittsburgh, everyday is like Sunday.

We have a number for the cemetery. We call it. No answer. No help. We call Aunt JoAnn. No answer. No help. We think we figured out what Aunt JoAnn actually said. We go up and down the roads. No help. We're in Carnegie and I suggest stopping at the nearby Funeral Home. They should know where it is. They are closed. Did no one die this weekend? We stop at the florist. I ask the nice ladies where the cemetery is. Six of them turn around and start answering my question. The lady nearest me grabs the little piece of paper and says "oh, she means St. Luke's. " They say different things but they all point the same way. One of them says something about seeing trees and a bridge and train tracks Really? We'll see trees and bridges and train tracks? In Western Pa? Really? Well now we're set. We go up the hill. We try to follow the directions. We decide whether the right turn or the left turn is supposed to be really going straight. We come around a curve and see, um, trees and a bridge and train tracks, and then we think we're on the right road. There's a cemetery! Hurrah! Dead people! 

It doesn't say Mount Olivet but it does say Elizabeth Ann Seton. Formerly St. Lukes. No one is there. It is small. The driveway runs along the crest of a hill, with the tombstones spilling out down the hill on each side. We each get out and take a side, looking for our family's graves. Scot was looking for new graves, since our aunt just died, but I wasn't that clever; I was actually looking for older graves, since I thought our grandparents were buried there. After ten minutes of trudging around the grass in the hot sun, the graveyard didn't seem so tiny anymore. I was trying to keep my search systematic, but I was on a slant the whole time, and I would get distracted by a really old looking stone and to over to it. Finally my cell phone rang. Scot ran into someone who told him that we were probably in the wrong place. I trudge back up the hillside to the car. I don't see anyone, so I don't know where this information comes from. Maybe it was a ghost. I hope it was a ghost who grew up in the South Hills.

We take off again with our third set of ambigous directions. Now we're looking for a sign for a school district that is no longer there. Pittsburgher's really love to tell you to look for stuff that used to be or isn't there anymore. Navigation by nostalgia.  I don't know if it's charming or annoying. We're speeding up a road that we've already been on three times today, and Scot is getting increasingly fed up with Aunt JoAnn, because if we are actually anywhere near where we are supposed to be, then none of the roads Scot remembers her mentioning were really good clues. I have to remind him that Aunt JoAnn stopped driving at night a few years ago, and by night I mean after 4pm, and that she does not make left hand turns. Just doesn't do them. And once, when she gave directions to our cousin Michele about how to get from her house to Scot's house, which should take about 20-25 minutes, she gave her the RIGHT TURN ONLY directions which takes about an hour ten. This was a blessing though really because it meant less time with our cousin Michele. Believe me.

So really, we had to reason to suspect that this morning would have gone any differently. Scot is just about to turn the car around and I'm shouting at him to stay the course when we see the big ass sign for MOUNT OLIVET CEMETERY. Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton Parrish. Formerly Saint Luke's.  You are well out of it, St. Luke.

It's a lovely little place on top of a mountain with flowers and trees and an incredible view and a nice breeze and it takes us ten seconds to find a mess of Manions. We will probably move my parents there. You would think that with so much of our family buried there, that Scot or I would have many memories  of visiting this place, rather than just a vague kind of "oh yeah, this place" recollection that I'm not even sure is authentic.  But it's right in keeping with our family to have something which should be common knowledge or a family tradition just turn into an hour of trying to figure out something from clues on a little slip of paper.  And that's the kind of plot that would make my mom laugh.