Bonnie Brown's body was turned to ashes. No one cares too much about the world's lack of a Bonnie Brown, as far as I can see, except for her first son, Dan.

After old Barb Brown's funeral in May of this year the bunch of us went out to the country road very near the old Brown Family Centenial Farm where we looked at the place Barb's remains would soon be interred on the bottom shelf of the cold mausaleum in the woods at the back of the small family cemetary, and walked around the grounds that surround it. Looking at ancestral markers dating from before, during and after the Civil War, including old Hiram who survived Andersonville Prison.

Bonnie lies there alone just inside of the western entrance so the grave seems to greet those who visit, if they enter there, which I don't. I enter by means of the north-east drive.

It's just like Roger to make that kind of selection. Seeing her as the formal hostess wearing a plain little black evening dress. Remembering Bonnie's telephone greetings I can still hear her "Good Evening" which always reminded me of the sound, eerily, of some old scary radio show back in the mid to late 40s. The only thing missing was the creeking noise of a rusty hinge on some very old door to nowhere. I became eventually uneasy enough about calling after sundown in order to try to catch her in daylight, so I'd get a "Hello" instead. Never-the-less there was always something mildly rediculous in the sound of her voice, it was pitched a little too low, came out too slowly, the dramatic pause was part of her repertoire, also there was something maybe tonally haunting about the words she selected, or more likely, she usually sounded a bit haunted.

I can't imagine who haunted Bonnie in life, unless it was her own forgotten dreamy newly-wed self, but this Spring on Memorial Day I found myself arguing with her, still, as I dug around her grave and placed the lone Lily of the Valley that I know will multiply with the years, if there is enough rain this year.
I haven't been back since I planted it so I won't know until Fall, I guess, whether it has survived the heat of summer.

That Lily came from the front yard of my house, from the stock that she was given by a neighbor when she and Roger were first married. She brought me a nice batch and suggested that sometime perhaps she and I might take some out to the family plot up in Maple Rapids, where her ashes now reside.

I have wondered for over a quarter century, now, if Bonnie decided to leave this earth at that exact time of August 14, 1976 because she felt she would be better noticed on a family tree if she offed herself in that night as a creepy Bicentennial offering.

It was interesting to me that she selected that date, since that was my 13th wedding anniversary, mine and that of my second and now third husband, Tom Brown. It was Tom's mother and dad's anniversary too. They married in 1934 and then we followed suit on the same date in 1963, we meant it as an enduring homage, a gift for Doris and Hiram that we selected that date.

I walked toward them as Dan stood near Bonnie's grave blinking at the marker with what looked like large rain drops dotting his powder blue suit. His wife held him, anchoring him in time in the now while he was clearly lost and immeasurably bewildered by the loss of her when he was such a seemingly happy tiny boy.

The two offspring of Bonnie Brown, Jeffrey and Daniel are small men. Which is odd. Bonnie was taller than average, lithe, not just slender - more like a model than a housewife, though she had chosen the latter rather than the former. Roger was and is a big guy, both parents being not diminutive the fact that they grew into small sons gave me to wonder if grief can stunt growth. I'm now inclined to believe that it might.