dog that had pulled an old white shirt off a laundry line and was looking for somebody to show it off to. What you saw were the silly superstitions of old Mormons.”
T HE NIGHT AFTER THE APPEARANCE OF THE GHOST , my grandfather Will Brown died at age seventy-three. At his bedside were his church bishop, his wife, and all his living children. I don’t remember feeling much about his passing at the time—after all, I never got to meet the man—but thirty-some years later, when I read Melissa’s final journals, I came across a simple passage that broke my heart. Melissa’s last few notebooks were tedious, as hell to read—page after page after page about knitting doilies for grandchildren, or cooking roasts for guests, or dusting knickknacks. Even her reportage of her husband’s stroke was dully matter-of-fact. And then, noting Will Brown’s final night, Melissa wrote five words about his slip into darkness: “Watched him die. So hard.” After reading those words, I never took those people’s feelings lightly again.
Will Brown’s funeral was reportedly one of the biggest that Provo had witnessed in years. Apparently, everybody had revered the old schooljanitor. For some reason, all the grandchildren—and various other tots-were seated in the first few rows of the church, right in front of my grandfather’s open casket. It was the first time I had ever seen a dead person up close. I studied Will Brown’s white hair, trying to feel something. Mostly, I just felt horrified at having to look at a dead man. There was something unreal about staring so long at death, something that felt forbidden, like looking at raw sex—except death, I later realized, was far nastier.
Later, a long line of limousines and cars rode out to the Provo City Cemetery. We stood around a freshly dug empty grave, and my grandfather’s coffin rested alongside the deep hole. Wreaths had been draped across the casket and, one by one, Will Brown’s children approached the coffin and added single flowers to the pile. When my uncle George’s turn came, he seemed to fumble, looking for a place to put his flower. Finally he dropped it on the pile, and the boutonniere glided gracefully into place alongside the other flowers. It seemed to me at the time as if my grandfather had reached up from death and pulled the rose down to him. I have thought about that image many times over the years, and it has appeared frequently in my dreams.
As we were walking away from the grave, I stepped accidentally on a headstone. Then, deliberately, I stepped on another and another. Maybe I was trying to dispel some of the fear I felt, being so close to the dead. I don’t really know. It was a childish and irreverent thing to do, and it was met with disapproving gasps from my aunts and cousins. The next thing I knew, one of the stern Mormon patriarchs had grabbed and whirled me around and was sticking a finger in my face. “Never disrespect the dead, young man,” he told me, poking his finger.
“Never.
Remember that you live in their debt.”
N OT LONG AGO I PAID A REPEAT VISIT of sorts to the Brown farm.
My cousin Brenda took me on a drive up around the Grandview area, which is now filled with nice, clean, box-style houses. What was once Jordan Lane is now Jordan Avenue, and at the end of the avenue is the property that was once owned by my grandparents. It now belongs to a cousin—the son of one of my mother’s sisters—and he (or somebody) has sequestered the land behind a fence and posted a sign: DEAD END, PRIVATE PROPERTY . There’s something unreal about the barrier: It’s a dead end where there really shouldn’t be one; you get the feeling that what’s been sealed off here isn’t property so much as history—a past that’s better forgotten. At the same time, there’s no history visibly apparent. Everything that was once here has been transformed or razed, turnedinto modern urbanity, and modern mundaneness. Of course, you can’t exactly
T HE NIGHT AFTER THE APPEARANCE OF THE GHOST , my grandfather Will Brown died at age seventy-three. At his bedside were his church bishop, his wife, and all his living children. I don’t remember feeling much about his passing at the time—after all, I never got to meet the man—but thirty-some years later, when I read Melissa’s final journals, I came across a simple passage that broke my heart. Melissa’s last few notebooks were tedious, as hell to read—page after page after page about knitting doilies for grandchildren, or cooking roasts for guests, or dusting knickknacks. Even her reportage of her husband’s stroke was dully matter-of-fact. And then, noting Will Brown’s final night, Melissa wrote five words about his slip into darkness: “Watched him die. So hard.” After reading those words, I never took those people’s feelings lightly again.
Will Brown’s funeral was reportedly one of the biggest that Provo had witnessed in years. Apparently, everybody had revered the old schooljanitor. For some reason, all the grandchildren—and various other tots-were seated in the first few rows of the church, right in front of my grandfather’s open casket. It was the first time I had ever seen a dead person up close. I studied Will Brown’s white hair, trying to feel something. Mostly, I just felt horrified at having to look at a dead man. There was something unreal about staring so long at death, something that felt forbidden, like looking at raw sex—except death, I later realized, was far nastier.
Later, a long line of limousines and cars rode out to the Provo City Cemetery. We stood around a freshly dug empty grave, and my grandfather’s coffin rested alongside the deep hole. Wreaths had been draped across the casket and, one by one, Will Brown’s children approached the coffin and added single flowers to the pile. When my uncle George’s turn came, he seemed to fumble, looking for a place to put his flower. Finally he dropped it on the pile, and the boutonniere glided gracefully into place alongside the other flowers. It seemed to me at the time as if my grandfather had reached up from death and pulled the rose down to him. I have thought about that image many times over the years, and it has appeared frequently in my dreams.
As we were walking away from the grave, I stepped accidentally on a headstone. Then, deliberately, I stepped on another and another. Maybe I was trying to dispel some of the fear I felt, being so close to the dead. I don’t really know. It was a childish and irreverent thing to do, and it was met with disapproving gasps from my aunts and cousins. The next thing I knew, one of the stern Mormon patriarchs had grabbed and whirled me around and was sticking a finger in my face. “Never disrespect the dead, young man,” he told me, poking his finger.
“Never.
Remember that you live in their debt.”
N OT LONG AGO I PAID A REPEAT VISIT of sorts to the Brown farm.
My cousin Brenda took me on a drive up around the Grandview area, which is now filled with nice, clean, box-style houses. What was once Jordan Lane is now Jordan Avenue, and at the end of the avenue is the property that was once owned by my grandparents. It now belongs to a cousin—the son of one of my mother’s sisters—and he (or somebody) has sequestered the land behind a fence and posted a sign: DEAD END, PRIVATE PROPERTY . There’s something unreal about the barrier: It’s a dead end where there really shouldn’t be one; you get the feeling that what’s been sealed off here isn’t property so much as history—a past that’s better forgotten. At the same time, there’s no history visibly apparent. Everything that was once here has been transformed or razed, turnedinto modern urbanity, and modern mundaneness. Of course, you can’t exactly
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